All hell was let loose Tuesday as angry youths of Ofumwegbe community in Ovia North-east local government area of Edo State reportedly launched a reprisal attack on some Fulani herdsmen grazing cattle in the area following the alleged raping and killing of a female indigene of the town by one of the herdsmen.
Ofunmwegbe town is located at Okada junction along the Benin – Lagos Expressway. The irate youths who stormed the camp of the Fulani herdsmen in the bush, were said to have sacked them from the area before taking their protest to the highway thus causing panic amongst commuters, passers-by, and traders. They were said to have brandished the corpse of the murder victim to draw attention to their plight as they engaged in violent protests against what they termed the excesses of the itinerant herdsmen whom they insisted must vacate their community.
Eyewitnesses told the magazine that the rampaging youths brandished fresh leaves and barricaded the highway thereby causing traffic gridlock along the very busy road to the discomfiture of hapless commuters en route the South-south, South-east and northern part of the country. It was gathered that it took a combined effort and intervention of men of the Nigerian Army and the state police command to bring the situation under control by allegedly dispersing the protesting youths with tear gas. Some persons were said to have sustained injuries as a result of the ensuing commotion.
An eye witness hinted the magazine that the youths must have been pushed to the wall by their seeming helplessness in the face of provocation by the Fulani herdsmen, recalling how they had perpetrated heinous crimes in the town in the past few months. Recall that one Azebiokhai, a lecturer in Igbinedion University, Okada was last month allegedly shot dead by a suspected Fulani during a failed kidnap bid. A driver conveying an ambulance with medical equipment donated by the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, from Port Harcourt, Rivers State, to Akure in Ondo State, was reportedly killed in a similar circumstance just recently by suspected Fulani herdsmen.
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