At the Ebebe Junction in Abakaliki, the Ebonyi State capital, gunmen suspected of enforcing a two-day sit-at-home supposedly announced by an unidentified organization in the South-East burnt a vehicle ablaze as a motorcycle operator narrowly escaped death.
The terrorists struck about 6:20 a.m. on Friday, a day after President Muhammadu Buhari arrived in the country for a two-day state visit.
According to the Nigerian News Agency, Anayo Chukwuemeka, a resident in the area, the attackers fired numerous rounds, sending residents fleeing for safety.
He said everything happened in a flash when explaining the incident. When the gunshots stopped and we emerged, we discovered a truck that had been completely burned out.
The gunmen said they were enforcing the sit-at-home declared in protest of President Muhammadu Buhari’s visit to Ebonyi, Chukwuemeka, said the driver of the vehicle, who managed to flee.
According to Chukwuemeka, a motorcycle operator who also survived the attackers’ gunshots, they fired at him but he miraculously avoided the bullets.
Mr Simon Onwe, a local business owner, also claimed that the attackers arrived in a car without a license plate, fired sporadically in the air, and then departed.
Onwe claimed that he was still inside his business because he had slept there when he heard gunfire, but that he later discovered that they had abandoned a vehicle that had been burned beyond recognition and that a motorcycle operator had narrowly escaped their bullets.
It’s really terrible that such a nasty occurrence occurred in this location, which is normally extremely tranquil and bustling with business activity, especially in the evenings, he remarked.
Meanwhile, the area has been blocked off by a combined team of Nigerian Police and Ebubeagu Eastern Security Outfit, Ebonyi Command.
Loveth Odah, the State Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), said she has yet to receive a report on the incident.
Odah claimed that she had not received the information and that she was only receiving it from the reporter.
Meanwhile, a police official at the scene of the event, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, claimed that the armed offenders have been apprehended.
In a statement signed by Emma Powerful, its media and publicity coordinator, the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB), a separatist organization pushing for the independent state of Biafra, said the party has not announced any sit-at-home in the South-East.
