There was pandemonium again in Aba, Abia State’s commercial nerve centre this morning (Monday, July 29) as gunmen suspected to be enforcers of the Simon Ekpa Autopilots-declared Monday sit-at-home apparently took to the streets to enforce the order.
The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) had declared a weekly (every Monday) sit-at-homeIt in the South East to compel the South East political, business and cultural leadership to work for and secure the release of Nnamdi Kanu after agents of Nigerian and Kenyan governments reportedly abducted him in Nairobi, Kenya, in June 2021 and extra-renditioned him to Nigeria for trial on treasonable felony charges.
IPOB, a self-determination group, which wields a lot of moral authority in the South East and which Kanu heads, had vowed to sustain the Monday sit-at-home anti-Kanu detention protest, until Kanu’s release but later opted for sit-at-home only on days of Kanu’s court appearances, following appeals from Igbo leadership, including town and traders’ unions, the clergy, traditional rulers and Ohanaeze Ndigbo, all of who were worried about the damage a sustained weekly sit-at-home exercise would inflict on the economy of the South East.
Consequently, in August of the same year (2021), IPOB heeded the calls and announced the suspension of the weekly sit-at-home protest but said it would call for it each time Kanu was to appear in court.
However, a splinter group which called themselves Auto Pilots and headed by Finland-based, Nigerian-Finnish army reservist and county councillor, Mr. Simon Ekpa, who calls himself Kanu’s acolyte but not a member of IPOB, insisted on the Monday sit-at-home and have been enforcing it ever since, even defying Kanu’s calls from detention for the exercise to be called off.
Ekpa’s followers vigorously defend him, insisting that without the enforcement of the Monday sit-at-home, Nnamdi Kanu would have been forgotten and abandoned by these “self-serving Igbo political leadership to stew in his own juice”, as one of them once put it.
Sources said the gunmen who were wearing hoods operated in a Toyota Sienna minivan and a Hummer bus, first struck at the Arise and Shine junction by Umuosu on the Enugu-Aba-Port Harcourt Expressway.
Sources further said they also set ablaze a commercial bus that was Port Harcourt, Rivers State-bound, at the Ugwunagbo Local Government Area axis of the Enugu-Aba-Port Harcourt Expressway, after ordering the passengers out.
They also reportedly set ablaze a Lexus Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV), belonging to a Medical Director who was about to drive out of his hospital when the gunmen accosted him and ordered him out of his car.
Also attacked by the gunmen, according to sources, was a popular fast food restaurant located on the same Enugu-Aba-Port Harcourt Expressway, whose windows were shattered by the attackers as customers scampered for safety.
According to an unconfirmed report, a security personnel was shot in the course of the attack and had been taken to an undisclosed private hospital for treatment as at the time of this report, while another source said the gunmen also burnt down a government plate-numbered SUV.
It was further learnt that the gunmen who were pursued by security agents escaped through Umuosu Primary School through Umugo to Ozata before joining the Expressway.
Aware that soldiers of the 14 Brigade had cordoned off the Osisioma-Port Harcourt Expressway junction, the gunmen reportedly made a diversion through Umuode-Umuojima village road, causing residents to scamper for safety and close their shops as the gunmen shot sporadically into the air.
But still in pursuit, the soldiers were said to have chased the gunmen into Umuojima, where a gun duel ensued, resulting in the killing of one of them while several others sustained gunshot wounds but managed to escape.
The body of the deceased gunman was said to have been recovered by the soldiers.
Sources also disclosed that one of the vehicles used by the gunmen in the operation, a blood-stained Sienna bus, was recovered by the soldiers.
