RAYMOND OZOJI reports
It was a festival of deaths on 31st January this year along Oba Old Road near Rojenny Games Village Oba Idemili-South Local Government Area of Anambra State where some anti-tout operatives driving one-way died carelessly while chasing a tipper driver
Investigations by HEADLINE NEWS revealed that the said tipper driver was running from the grip of the anti-tout officers to escape illegal arrest following invasion of Oba Old Road Tipper Garage by the anti-tout squad and subsequent arrest of 5 tipper drivers for no fathomable offense.
It was gathered that while the anti-tout squad randomly arrested tipper drivers for not helping to apprehend a certain tout collecting money from Keke drivers in the area; who ran into the garage and escaped while being chased by the anti-tout officers, led to the arrest of some tipper drivers as one of them scampered with his tipper.
A member of the Oba Old Road Tipper Garage who gave an eyewitness account of the fatal crash that claimed the lives of some anti-tout operatives, told HEADLINE NEWS that the anti-tout officers stormed the garage and arrested about 5 drivers whom he claimed neither smoked Indian hemp nor cigarettes and that some of their drivers who were victims of anti-tout brutality were still in critical conditions at the hospital.
The source stated that it was in the course of the arrest that one of the tipper drivers scampered with his vehicle in a bid to escape the wrath of the anti-tout but unfortunately those on the operation, according to the source, phoned their colleagues to block the fleeing driver with another vehicle from the front even though the anti-tout officers blocking the tipper driver were driving on one-way which in itself was a traffic offense.
The source further disclosed that it was in a bid to beat the anti-tout officers driving one-way that the tipper hit their vehicle in front of it while the other anti-tout vehicle chasing it from behind with full acceleration crashed on the tipper from behind resulting in a festival of corpses along the Oba old road as viral video of the fatal crash showed some casualties had their heads completely damaged while others were trapped under the tipper dead.
Also HEADLINE NEWS gathered from the Chairman of Onitsha Zone of Tipper Drivers Association Comrade Chukwuebuka Unekwe that the anti-tout enforcers stormed one of their locations in Oba on 30th January this year and arrested about 5 tipper drivers. He said the drivers arrested called him on the phone to come and bail them from the anti-tout office in Onitsha.
He said when he inquired to know what they did to warrant their arrest, they said they did nothing; that the crime they committed was not helping them to apprehend a tout who ran into the park while being chased by the anti-tout enforcers. Unekwe also stated that after the random arrest of some tipper drivers on 30th January, the anti-tout officers still repeated further arrests on 31st January at the Oba tipper park.
This Unekwe noted led to one of the tipper owners trying to escape with his tipper but unfortunately intercepted by the anti-tout officers who drove one-way to stop him. The development according to him, resulted in the catastrophe that claimed the lives of some of the anti-tout officers as he pointed out that the anti-tout bus chasing the tipper from behind crashed on it while the other anti-tout vehicle running one-way hit the tipper from the front and about 10 people died in the crash.
The Onitsha zone tipper drivers chairman maintained that their colleagues who were arrested by the anti-tout officers were still in the anti-tout cell in Onitsha and that the anti-tout officers continued arrest of tipper drivers in Oba and Onitsha after the tragic incident at Oba even as he said that tipper drivers do not have issues with men of the anti-tout agency.
He said that tipper drivers are now afraid to operate in the state because anti-tout officers are threatening to deal decisively with them even as he appealed to the state government to intervene urgently to avoid further calamity.
Although he pointed out that from all indications, it is only the anti-tout enforcers that are giving tipper drivers nightmares for no tangible reasons but the likes of Operation Clean and Healthy Anambra (Ocha-Brigade), Anambra Road Traffic Management Agency (ARTMA) and others do not give them nightmares.
Meanwhile efforts to get the anti-tout boss to speak on the fatal crash that claimed the lives of his men at Oba was unsuccessful after several attempts to reach him by this journalist as at the time of writing this report.
HEADLINE NEWS also gathered that the incident has been reported to the police in Anambra.
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