Crime
Baptized in cauldron of blood, IPOB bandits engaged police; here’s how it all ended
A gang of IPOB militants bathed themselves in the blood of a goat before daring an attack on a police formation in Orlu.
Police stormed their hideout at an uncompleted building Amaifeke Orlu LGA of Imo immediately after the ritual on Sunday morning.
In the battle that followed, between mere police bravery and juju-backed militancy, three people got killed. Others fled. Some surrendered.
The backstory however came into the open after the confrontation.
“On searching the camp and its surroundings, a native goat that have just been slaughtered with the blood drained into a container and rub on their bodies to fortify themselves against police bullet was recovered,” said Imo police commissioner, Rabiu Hussaini.
Items Hussaini said his men recovered included two locally fabricated General Purpose Machine Gun (GPMG) , Sixteen Improvised Explosives Devices (I.E.Ds), one English made pump action gun, two locally made pistols, 37 rounds of live cartridges, three Automatic Machine Guns kick starter and one bomb detonator.”
Others were recovered include three automatic guns connecting batteries, a big container of gun powder, charms, two Biafran flags, three bomb detonator remote controls, six different makes of GSM handsets, a black travelling bag containing male clothes suspected to have been robbed or belonging to a kidnapped victim with GSM No. 08034958267 pasted on it.
Among the dead are Chidera Nnabuhe aka Dragon— the Orlu sector commander of IPOB/ ESN and native of Umuala Amaifeke in Orlu LGA.
Others are identified by their aliases: J.J and Dadawa, both natives of Ohazara in Ebonyi.
Emeka Sunday, 20, from Anike in Ohazara LGA of Ebonyi, and Anthony Okeke, 44, of Umuala Amaifeke Orlu LGA surrendered.
Sunday and Okeke have made useful statements; they are even ready to tell on others in the gang.
“It is on good record that this is the terror group that have been terrorising the good people of Orlu. And investigation revealed that, all the violent crimes including the high profile kidnappings and armed robberies that have been going within Orlu axis were being masterminded by them,” the commissioner said.
The National Daily has reported how separatist groups across the nation rely largely on charms and rituals to break their ethnic nations away from Nigeria.
The Ilana Omo Oodua in the southwest too pushed forward a former car seller Adeyemo Sunday Igboho who trusted in his Yooruba native power to secure the region and slice away an Oodu Republic form Nigeria.
He is now in Beninese jail as an illegal migrant caught with forged travel documents on his way to Germany , after his charms failed, and he took off. Igboho lost two of his men, in an encounter with the DSS at his home in July.
The DSS claimed it recovered charms along with weapons from Igboho’s Soka home in Ibadan.