A civil rights group, Civil Rights Realization and Advancement Network (CRRAN) has urged the Government of Enugu State to take all necessary measures to unmask those behind the killing of three Keke operators in the state capital, Enugu.
The decomposing bodies of the three missing Keke operators who all hailed from the Northern part of the country were found in a church building site at Ugwuaji, a suburb of Enugu on Monday.
The leaders of the Northern community in the city, identified the three victims as Mallam Samaila from Kano State,
Mallam Babangida from Bauchi and Mallam Hashaibu from Kano.
Reacting to the incident in a statement on Thursday, President of CRRAN said information he gathered from the Northern community showed that the three keke operators were last seen on Saturday January 23, 2016.
The statement reads further: “According to the members of the community Mallam Samaila was last seen around 6:30pm, at Garriki, Enugu, where he had dropped passengers he carried from New Artisan market to Garriki.
“We learnt that it was from Garriki, that he picked the passengers who sent him to his early grave.
“Babangida was last seen around 10 pm, drinking tea at the New Artisan Market before he left and took the passengers who sent him to the journey of no return.
“The community said Hashaibu was last seen at the Enugu Central mosque, Owerri Road, where he observed the evening prayer (Magrib) with other faithful. He left to go and look for passengers around 7pm.
“When the family of the deceased did not see them on Sunday January 24, 2016, there was panic in the community and they went to various Police stations to look for them but couldn’t find them. Also the Chief Imam of the Enugu Central mosque, Owerri Road, Alhaji Rukalmeni Saidi, led the community in prayers to locate the missing persons.
“It was on Monday afternoon that one of the tricycle operators from the community who was carrying passengers from New Artisan to Garriki, on reaching the flyover at Ugwuaji saw by the roadside the net that separated drivers’ seat from passengers’ seat in Hashaibu tricycle. He stopped picked it up and went back to the community to show the members of the community who later informed the Police at Ogui Police
Station and a search party went to the area.
“According to the search party, they stated that before locating the corpses of the deceased northern youths, they were surprised while combing the bush in the area to see human skeletons, other decomposing bodies and shallow graves where human beings were interred” Omotayo said.
He said the search party disclosed that some of the bodies were those of ladies and they vividly recalled a decomposing body of a female who had her cloth beside her and condoms, showing that she was raped before she was gruesomely murdered.
Omotayo said the Chief Imam of Enugu Central Mosque also corroborated the story and stated that what he saw when he was called by the search party was terrible.
“He (Chief Imam) stated that he saw human skeletons and decomposing bodies in the bush in the area, suggesting that killing of innocent citizens in the bush must have been going on for some time before the present case. He stated that the report in the media that the three Northern community youths were killed and buried in a church building is untrue
because the area and the surrounding bushes were littered with human remains” Omotayo said.
The CRANN boss said the corpses of the three were later taken to the cemetery that same night where the chief Imam led the Muslim prayer before they were interred.
He said the Northern community and the Chief Imam urged the state government to step up security in the state particularly at the Ugwuaji area which is now the most notorious area in Enugu and called for government assistance to the families of the three deceased persons.
Omotayo said the Northern community has advised its’ members operating tricycles to stop operating at night, from 7pm, because the perpetrators of the dastardly acts used cover of darkness to perpetrate their evil acts.
Omotayo however urged the state government to consolidate on the adequate security put in place by its’ immediate predecessor and immediately compulsorily acquire the entire area of the incident for security of the larger populace.
He also called for a thorough investigation into the killings particularly how human skeletons and decomposing bodies came about littering the bushes in the area despite the fact that some buildings were under construction in the area and the owners of those buildings and those working for them cannot claim that they are not seeing those human remains which littered the area.
He said the state government should take urgent steps to remove the decomposing bodies from the area for the general health of the citizens.
Omotayo challenged the government to take all necessary steps to unmask those behind these killings and ensure that they are made to face the full wrath of the law.
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