Security leaders
in Abuja were late last Thursday scratching their heads, trying to make sense
of how a militia group in Nasarawa State, the Ombatse that built a fierce
loyalty through blood oaths, killed over 55 police officers and 10 operatives
of the Directorate of State Security.
Part of the
puzzle, knowledgeable sources told PREMIUM TIMES, was how the security officers
were lured into a cruel ambush, dispossessed of their weapons, brutally
murdered, and then burnt into cold ash.
“It is the most
cold blooded act I have witnessed against the law enforcement community in my
three decades in the force” a senior police officer in Lafia, capital of Nasarawa
State, told PREMIUM TIMES struggling to conceal bitter groans.
Other puzzles
include who authorized the ill-fated operation in the first place, both at the
police end, and at the Directorate of State Security end, which cost both
institutions of the team leaders of the operation.
Deputy Force
Public Relations Officer, Frank Mbah, describing the event as an act of
impunity in Abuja on Thursday, adds that “enough is enough,'' promising also
that the police will track down the killers, which robbed the institution of
its operational chief in the state, Mohammed Momoh, an Assistant Commissioner
of police who hails from Kogi State.
Force headquarters
also repudiated earlier claims Thursday that the Nasarawa State Police
Commissioner, Abayomi Akeremale, due for retirement at the end of the month,
had been placed on suspension, and that the operational coordination of the
crisis had been handed over to a deputy Inspector General of police from Abuja.
The DSS, on its
part, would not confirm its casualty to PREMIUM TIMES; merely saying it had
deployed a search and rescue team to determine fatalities of its operatives on
the assignment.
However, sources
in Lafia disclosed that the Nasarawa state director of the Service has been
recalled to Abuja and placed under “some preliminary punitive sanction while
full investigations is apace,” evidence, according to the sources, that he
might have over-reached his powers in ordering such a high level operation
without the mandatory clearance and approval from Abuja.
Eight operatives
and two drivers of the agency were reportedly killed in the operation,
including the team leader, a mid career officer, thought to have been
“obviously saddled with an assignment beyond his pay grade.”
PREMIUM TIMES also
gathered that the local army unit declined to join on the Tuesday mission
citing the need for higher authorization. Police and security sources in Lafia
have so far been mute on civilian casualties, but the broader narrative of the
Nasarawa tragedy, late Tuesday, pointed more on the role of the Nasarawa state
administration, its desire to calm rising political temperature in the state,
the fear that the Eggon militias bore the marks of a nascent terror movement,
and the pressure it put on the security forces to initiate the Tuesday raid.
Security sources
said the state administration triggered the initial petition to the DSS and the
police on the presumed nefarious role of the militia.
Based on the
security report from the DSS, it was gathered that the police proceeded to
build an armada of 13-truck load of men late Tuesday on a mission to Asakio
village to disrupt a planned oath ceremony of the group, destroy the shrine,
which houses the shrine of Ombatse cult, a deity of the Eggon people, and to
arrest its spiritual leader.
Police sources and
officials in the state administration, in Lafia, who sought anonymity said that
just ten kilometers out of Lafia, what set out as a clandestine operation came
upon an ambush, well laid out by the Eggon attackers, who took on the security
convoy ultimately turning their mission into a monstrous killing field.
“This was planned
as a clandestine operation for which resources in men and materials were
mobilized from different units of the Lafia command, and for which almost none
of the men in the convoy knew their destination. Now how it all ended so
terribly, that the cultists would anticipate and wreck this kind of attack on
security people speak volumes of either infiltration or mission betrayal” a
distraught police officer said in Lafia.
Mission
of the police
Yet the Eggon
crisis that led to this tragedy was not a new phenomenon. The militia forces
attacked Agyaragu community in December last year, which led to the death of
ten persons of Koro extraction including a traditional ruler.
That attack led to
the banning of the group by the government of Nassarawa State in an official
gazette. Also last year, soldiers reportedly stormed the shrine in the group's
ancestral home in Nassarawa-Eggon local government and dispersed them, forcing
the cult's leader and some of his members to migrate to Asakio.
But while at
Asakio, the group soon began having difficult relationship with the dominant
Arago tribe leading to skirmishes and perennial loss of lives.
Some residents of
Lafia who spoke to PREMIUM TIMES painted the picture of a powerful group that
has members in many establishments in the state, and which built a tight loyal
core through an oath administered on members at the Ombatse shrine, called “the
Mbase.” The oath, observers of the group claimed, was always the prism through
which members sought to read presumed injustice in political power, and sought
to restructure the political and power landscape in Nasarawa State.
Persons who took
the Ombatse oath, and swore to its loyalty pledge, were therefore assured of
presumed “invisibility to bullets,” it was learnt.
Tuesday's raid was
an attempt by the state government, using the security agencies to break the
nerve of the group.
According to Eggon
News, a local newspaper, the Ombatse, which means 'time has come,' was founded
by six people. They include Alaku Ehe, Zabura Musa Akwanshiki, Shuaibu Alkali,
Hassan Musa Zico Kigbu, Iliyasu Hassan Gyabo and Abdullahi Usman.
Mr. Zico was
quoted in a chat with Eggon News as saying the group was born from a revelation
through a dream where their ancestors directed them to “rise up and cleanse the
land of societal ills such as adultery, fornication, drunkenness, theft, and
killings.”
Sources in Lafia
informed that politics may be behind the oath of secrecy, initiation and
violence by the group. They said the Eggon people are primarily based in
Nassarawa-Eggon and Akwanga Local Governments, but added that “they are spread
in almost all parts of the state”.
They also said
despite their numbers and perceived influence, the Eggon have not been able to
produce the governor.
“The Ombatse
therefore, pledged that come 2015 they will not be kingmakers, but must produce
the king themselves.” said Salisu, a resident of Lafia. Throwing more light,
Mr. Salisu said the group felt that they were unable to produce the governor
because they are not united and are always fighting each other, hence, he said,
“I am not surprised they are taking an oath this time around.”
To buttress his
point Mr. Salisu said “Look at Labaran Maku (Information Minister) and
(Solomon) Ewuga (a senator), they are both Eggons, very influential, but hardly
see eye to eye politically.”
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