In a chilling account, the Commander of Ebubeagu Security Network in Afikpo South Local Government Area of Ebonyi State, Kalu Chima, has told how he heard the gunshot that ended the life of his seven months pregnant wife. She was shot and killed by gun-toting men he knew, who invaded his home in Amaoso, Amaetiti, Amaoso Edda in the LGA. burnt it down.
According to him, he recognised one of them who is now in police custody, and tied the attack to the recent clashes between supporters of the State’s All Progressives Congress chairman and an APC House of Representatives candidate in Ekoli Edda, within the same local government area.
https://everyday.ng/2022/12/governor-orders-arrest-of-apc-state-chairman-and-partys-house-of-rep-candidate/
Recall that state governor, Engineer David Umahi, ordered the arrest of both men. Ebonyi has been in the throes of increasing violence, even as it works to tame the activities of “unknown gunmen” within its borders.
Chima told journalists in Abakaliki, the state capital: “On 1st January, 2023, I was sleeping in my bed with my wife and my two kids when I heard a gunshot in front of my house which woke me up immediately.
“I walked to the window and opened the curtain and saw men with Ak-47 riffles numbering about 19 and I know them all.
“One of them, who is the coordinator of one of the development centres in our local government, was positioning them, ordering them to cordon off my house.
“Some of them hit my door twice. I told my wife let’s run away.
“Because of my wife’s pregnancy, she couldn’t run. When the door was hit the third one, I left my wife and my children in the backyard.
“I jumped the fence and landed on where villagers throw waste.
“I laid there and heard the last gunshot and my wife shouted and couldn’t talk again. They poured fuel on my two houses and set them on fire.
“I called my PA to go and see what is happening in my house. When he got there, they have finished everything they were doing and he saw the dead body of my wife and my two kids there.
“I called one of my neighbours who assisted me because I was no longer in order and they came and assisted in carrying my wife’s dead body to the mortuary and deposited it.
“As I am talking to you, the coordinator of one of the development centres in the local government who led the group has been arrested.
“He is in the crack office of the state police command in Abakaliki here.
“Others are on the run but the police are seriously looking for a way to arrest them.
“These group of people went and burnt the State APC Chairman’s House and killed his brother.
“Unfortunately, police shot one of them in the leg that day they perpetrated the act.
“He ran to Ohafia in Abia State with the bullet. He was finding a way to remove the bullet and he couldn’t see it.
“The doctor there told him to get a police report before he can remove the bullet and he doesn’t have any way to get the police report.
“He called one of them that followed them and attacked my house and told him that he should beg me as a Commander of Ebubeagu to meet DPO to give him a police report for him to use so that doctor can remove the bullet from him.
“I met the Assistant Commissioner of Police and reported it to him.”