Gang sacks Njemanze community in Rivers, kills seven
From Kelvin Ebiri, Port Harcourt
RESIDENTS of the Njemanze shanty town in Diobu area of Port-Harcourt, River State gathered in clusters yesterday morning, palpable fear and anguish etched on their faces. They were mourning their losses.
In the wee hours of the day, they had again being dislodged from their shanties by heavy bombardments from their erstwhile neighbours.
Eventually when the cascading thick black smoke from the smouldering rubbles of their abodes subsided and the rattles of small arms backed with booms of rocket launchers became quiet, there were blood, tears and sorrow.
Seven people lay dead. More than 50 houses had been razed and hundreds of residents displaced.
About a hundred heavily armed men had stormed the settlement in several boats and commenced a house to house search for members of the Njemanze Vigilance Group. It was their third time.
It was not difficult for them to gain entrance, the houses were built mostly of corrugated iron sheets.
Residents told The Guardian yesterday morning that the militiamen shot sporadically at the homes of those who failed to open their doors when they demanded that they do so.
It was believed that it was in the course of this that five persons were killed. Two members of the Njemanze Peace Vigilance Group were also killed in their houses.
Amid the melee, the militiamen probably afraid of reprisals from security operatives, poured fuel on some houses and when they had retreated into their boats, opened fire with rocket launchers to set the houses ablaze. Over 50 houses were razed down, leaving several families homeless.
According to one Samuel George, a resident, the gunshots lasted for hours. Dynamites were also allegedly used as people around Ikwerre Road even confirmed hearing loud explosions in the early hours of yesterday.
Secretary of the Njemanze Peace Vigilance Group, Prince Andabaye told The Guardian that the people responsible for the attack were a gang of miscreants chased out of the shanty town sometimes last year because they were involved in a lot of criminal activities, such as armed robbery, rape and murders.
Disclosing that this was the third of such attacks in the past three months, Andabaye explained that members of the local vigilance group including himself had to run away because of the sophisticated weapons the gang used in the operation that lasted several hours. He confirmed that out of the seven people that were killed, two were members of the vigilance group.
"Around 12a.m., we heard sporadic gunshots and when we stepped out to find the source, we found that several hundred youths had taken over the waterfront. We also found out that they were the bad boys we asked to leave the environment because they were raping girls, committing armed robbery and murder. They killed two members of the Njemanze Peace Vigilance Group and five others," he said.
Residents whose homes were razed blamed men of the Rivers State Fire Service for failing to come to their rescue when some people who managed to escape ran to their office just a stone throw away and implored them to come and put out the inferno.
Save for the benevolence of the Shell Fire Service, one of the victims said, the fire would have affected hundreds of houses within the neighbourhood.
When the Rivers State Deputy Governor, Gabriel Toby, visited the shanty town, several people were still trying to gather the remains of their property that were not consumed by the fire.
Disturbed by the level of destruction of lives and property, the deputy governor who was accompanied by the State Commissioner of Police and other top security chiefs, charged the police to immediately fish out the culprits.
