How vigilante captured, made mincemeat of Ayade’s ex-aide Gen. Iron at market square

Thomas Obi Tawo aka Gen. Iron didn’t know how to die. Until his last day.

While the gun battle was raging between him, his gang and the hunters from the Boki LGA he had terrorized for years, he didn’t believe he was down on his luck on August 26.

As an aide to Gov. Ben Ayade on forest security, Gen. Iron was on long leash, according to community members who now shared the horror they lived through while the bandit was alive.

He drove people—mostly opponents—away from the community. And his men flaunted their AK-47 all over Boki and the environs.

Many believe the APC governor who employed him gave him such carte blanche.

“He never wanted any opposition or any rival around his neighbourhood,” a Facebook user posted.

“He became a commander of a militia. He threatened to kill the majority of the people in his area.”

As far as the jungle was concerned, Thomas was law unto many—it mattered little he was an illiterate young man.

What mattered was he was delivering—until he met his fair adversary.

According to a lawyer who gave his account on social media, Gen. Iron was all too ready to please Ayade, and he went after the governor’s former aides who refused to hop from the PDP to the APC with the governor.

The lawyer shared a instance.

“In sheer display of audacity, Iron went to Mark Obi’s house and warned him to desist from holding any PDP activities in his ward. Mark Obi stood his ground on that occasion and Iron left,” Ochinke said.

Obi reported the matter to the police in a detailed petition.

Nothing happened.

“General Iron was misled by that as an endorsement of his actions, and by the seeming lack of admonition from the government he served.”

Iron would later attempt to kill Obi—because he had many cheering him on, telling him he was unstoppable.

“Mark Obi miraculously survived the attack with grievous injuries. This was the height of it. Iron had outdone himself.”

His paymaster could have been scandalized, too.

So Ayade sacked the tin god, and sent the police after him.

With a sizable army of bandits and a handful of weapons, Gen. Iron became a full-blown militant leader, shooting it out with the police.

The lawyer said the police fell back later, having driven the criminals deep into the belly of the Cross River rainforest.

But the hunters refused to back off. They moved against Gen. Iron when he resurfaced again, and put him out in the last fight of his criminal derring-do.

The vigilante didn’t believe killing Iron was enough to pay him back in his own coin. They chopped him into pieces—and made a spectacle of it at Boki square.

So Iron’s many victims had closure, extra-judicial, though.

In his brief shelf life, Iron lived in the jungle, died in the jungle, and that from jungle justice.

Boki LGA traditional ruler later told the people Iron died elsewhere.

But the message is unmistakable.

“It is time for Boki people to live in peace and promote peaceful coexistence with one another,” HRH Atta-Otu Fredaline Aka said.

Cross River has been facing cult-related criminality in addition to banditry and secessionist agitation.

The National Daily has reported on the activity of groups like the Biafra National League, and others in the state.