A section of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) proclaimed a contentious one-week sit-at-home order, and the police in Enugu State, south-east Nigeria, claimed they have killed four gunmen implementing it.
This information was released in a statement on Friday night by the police spokesperson for Enugu State, Daniel Ndukwe.
One week sit-at-home
According to a previous article from Propolitics, Simon Ekpa, the head of Autopilot, a division of the IPOB, declared in a statement on June 14 that there would be a sit-at-home protest in the South-east for one week.
The sit-at-home protest, according to Mr. Ekpa, the self-declared prime minister of the Biafra Republic Government in Exile, will last from Friday, July 7, through Tuesday, July 10.
Later, he would declare that the sit-at-home days had been waived on Sunday, July 9, allowing the area’s many Christians to observe their religious practices.
However, Emma Powerful, the spokesperson for the IPOB faction headed by Mr. Kanu, later claimed to Propolitic that the sit-at-home order was not issued by the group but rather by “criminals” who wanted to obstruct Mr. Kanu’s release.
In the region’s five states, there have been reports of shootings by masked individuals implementing the civil action since July 3.
‘How the gunmen were killed’
Awkunanaw Divisional Headquarters police officers, according to Mr. Ndukwe, a deputy superintendent of police, caught the gunmen trying to steal a minivan from a driver along Agbani Road in Enugu South Council Area on Friday morning and dislodged them.
According to a police spokeswoman, the operatives stopped the attack by engaging the criminals in a gunfight, forcing them to get out of the car, and they “narrowly escaped with varying degrees of fatal gunshot wounds, due to the superior firepower of the operatives.”
He added that various weapons and ammo were also retrieved from the attackers during the operation. He claimed the operators later recovered the car, which had blood stains on its seats and other areas.
Mr Ndukwe said the operatives would later discover and recover “bodies of four of the male hoodlums, in a forest behind G. Ede Filling Station/Seven-Up, at Awkunanaw, Enugu, where they escaped into.”
Awkunawan is a community in Enugu South Local Government Area of the state.
According to Mr. Ndukwe, the operatives would later find and collect “bodies of four of the male hoodlums, in a forest behind G. Ede Filling Station/Seven-Up, at Awkunanaw, Enugu, where they escaped into.”
Awkunawan is a locality in the state’s Enugu South Local Government Area.
In order to ensure their protection, security measures have been put in place, therefore Mr. Ammani urged the locals to go about their normal business without worry.
The police commissioner pleaded for their ongoing assistance in helping the state’s law enforcement and other security organizations combat crime.
