65 bodies recovered so far. Ombatse “most likely” had prior knowledge of an impending raid.
Security leaders in Abuja were late 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.
Security leaders in Abuja were late 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, PREMIUM TIMES 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 told PREMIUM TIMES 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 told PREMIUM TIMES 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,” PREMIUM TIMES 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 PREMIUM TIMES 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.”
Source: Premium Times
UPDATE: 28 Policemen Found Alive
The police said 93 officers went for the operation.
The Nasarawa State Commissioner of Police, Abayomi Akeremale, has confirmed that 28 policemen have been found alive, following the attack by a militia group on May 7.
Mr. Akeremale told the News Agency of Nigeria in Lafia, on Friday that some of the policemen held hostage by the group during the attack were released on Friday morning.
He said that 17 corpses of the slain officers were yet to be recovered, explaining that a total of 93 police men were deployed for the operation out of which 43 were suspected to have been killed.
The police and the state government have blamed a group, Ombatse, in Nasarawa for the killings. PREMIUM TIMES reported how the sect were tipped of plans by the security operative to come dislodge them during an intitiation and oath taking ceremony on Tuesday. The sect members ambushed the security operatives.
Reliable security sources told PREMIUM TIMES that 65 security officials- largely police officers – were killed in the ambush; a figure which if added to the survivors gives the 93 Mr. Akeremale said went for the operation. Many of the victims were later burnt beyond recognition by the attackers.
The police commissioner said that a suspected member of the militia had been arrested and was in police custody, adding that investigations on the incident were going on.
As at time of filing this report, Mr. Akeremale was making arrangements to visit the Squadron 38 Mopol Base in Akwanga.
The commissioner said the visit was to appeal to spouses and children of the slain policemen who had blocked the Akwanga-Lafia highway in protest over the killing.
Source: NAN
UPDATE: The Police informants nabbed
How We Fished Out Police Insider Who Supplied Ombatse With Information – Police Commissioner
Commissioner of Police in Nasarawa State – Abayomi Akeremale, has disclosed how two policemen allegedly leaked operational details of security personnel on a mission to Alakyo village to arrest the leader of Eggon militia group – Ombatse, were arrested.
Parading the suspects in Government House, Lafia, around 4:30pm on Friday, Akeremale said one of the policemen simply identified as Corporal Enugu, was arrested after a crack team of detectives monitored his behavior since the day of the ill-fated operation.
He said Corporal Enugu who drove one of the patrol vans with registration number NPF 6997 C, was one of the men who returned alive from the operation.
“A team of detectives monitored him carefully. They first stumbled on charms in his vehicle (official vehicle). Then, they followed up and stormed in on him at his residence. But before our men got there, the information had already reached there. But my men were fast to get him, and a second policeman in his house,” the police commissioner said.
Three AK47 rifles and a sack of charms were paraded alongside Corporal Enugu and his accomplice, Corporal Haruna Joseph.
Akeremale also showed Governor Umaru Tanko Al-Makura the front of a police van driven by Corporal Enugu which had a red sticker with an image of a machine gun and a chain of bullets, by the registration number, saying: “our investigation has shown that this sticker was put so that his members can notice, separate and spare him.
“This is just the beginning. It is like the beginning of a river, which is usually small; it will lead us to track down all members of the sect.”
UPDATE: Officers Kidnapped
Inspector General of police, Mohammed Abubakar
The police boss revealed that some policemen were still being held hostage by the Ombatse.
A number of police personnel are still being held hostage by militia group, Ombatse, nearly a week after their colleagues were brutally murdered by the group in Nasarawa state
, Inspector General of police, Mohammed Abubakar, has said.
Mr. Abubakar made the revelation on Saturday in Lafia, when he visited the wives of the slain police officers. He described the killings as callous.
About 30 policemen were killed by members of a militia group, Ombatse. The police boss said that some officers were still in the custody of the militia group, adding that efforts were being made to ensure their release.
“We are making every peaceful effort to ensure that some of our men still being held hostages are released unhurt,” Mr. Abubakar said.
He appealed to the Nasarawa State elders to help the police fish out those behind the killing of dozens of policemen in Alakyo Village on Tuesday.
The Minister of Police Affairs, Caleb Olubolade, who also spoke described the killing as barbaric.
“Somebody somewhere is causing havoc for whatever reason and the society must not allow that to continue,” he said.
Mr. Olubolade assured that the police would unravel those behind the killing and bring them to justice.
Nasarawa State governor, Umaru Al-Makura, said that the Ombatse group that attacked the personnel, was proscribed since January. He said that elders of the area were not happy with the activities of the group, “but could not talk to them for fear of the sophisticated weapons at their disposal.”
The governor said that efforts were being made to recover the remaining bodies of the slain officers.
The IG had a closed door meeting with the spouses of the slain officers at the state police headquarter in Lafia.
Stella Momoh, the widow of a slain officer said she could not believe that her husband was dead. She thanked the IG for the visit and expressed the hope that the Police High Command would take care of their children as promised.
Source: NAN
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