Residents of Bende road in Umuahia, capital of Abia State, were perplexed when on Tuesday morning they beheld a sight of fetish object placed in front of the Police Area Command.
And the wonder for the residents was that it was placed by the Police to ‘to ward off (unknown) gunmen.’
Eyewitnesses said that the the object placed in the area where human and vehicular movements have been restricted.
Some residents, who discussed in hushed tones, said it was placed there to protect security operatives from a series of attacks by the gunmen who have been terrorising the South East region for some time now.
Abia is one of the States where gunmen suspected to be members of the Eastern Security Network (ESN), the armed wing of the secessionist Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), have been staging attacks on Police Stations and government infrastructure.
In the process, Armed Forces of Nigeria and Police personnel have been killed and many police stations set ablaze.
Efforts made to get the reaction of SP Geoffrey Ogbonna, Police Public Relations Officer in the state, on the development did not yield results as he neither answered calls nor responded to messages sent to him.
This story first appeared in Daily Trust
