The Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP, name withheld), who was shot on Friday in Benin, the Edo State capital, in the exchange of gunfire with cultists who engaged in supremacy battle, died Saturday at the University of Benin Teaching Hospital (UBTH).
The two other policemen, both Inspectors, who were also shot along with the ACP, were still receiving treatment at UBTH, but on danger list, with bodies littering the streets and roads of Benin and its environs.
The three policemen ran into an ambush by the rampaging Aiye and Vikings cult groups during rescue mission in the notorious Upper Sokponba and Murtala Mohammed Way axes of Benin.
Death of the ACP was confirmed in confidence Saturday evening through the telephone by a senior police Officer of Edo command.
The number of persons, both innocent residents and cultists, who lost their lives to the rival war between members of the two cult groups, rose to twenty eight, from Friday’s figure of eighteen, as the shootings and killings both at night and in broad daylight, still continued.
Policemen in Edo command were now receiving threat messages and calls from many of the fleeing 1,993 inmates, who escaped on October 19 from the Maximum Correctional Centre (White House) on Sapele Road and the Mèdium Correctional Centre on Airport Road, both in Benin, during the #EndSARS protests that were hijacked by hoodlums.
The threat calls and messages were mostly for policemen who investigated and prosecuted the convictions of the escapees.
It was also learnt that the sudden increase in the volume of illegal arms and ammunition in Edo state was as a result of the looting and razing of seven police stations in Edo on October 19, with large cache of arms and ammunition now in the hands of criminals, mostly the fleeing suspects in the cells of the burnt police stations and the escapees of the two correctional centres, mostly cultists, who immediately returned to crime.
On Saturday, a medical practitioner, Dr. Maxwell Orosanye, working for the Edo state government-owned Central Hospital, Benin, was shot by the rampaging gunmen, suspected to be cultists, and he was still receiving treatment in an undisclosed hospital in Edo.
Orosanye was shot near Mobil filling station on Siluko Road, Benin, while his Toyota Corolla saloon car was snatched at gunpoint.
Moving round the hot spots in Benin, especially Upper Sokponba, Siluko, Ibivwe, Uselu, Isihor, Iguosa and Ugbowo, hosting the Federal Government-owned University of Benin (UNIBEN), Saturday evening, revealed that the residents were living in fear and mostly remained indoors to avoid being hit by stray bullets, with night life disappearing.
The cultists were still looking for rivals to kill, while searching from house to house, without any challenge, in spite of the heavy deployment of soldiers in Benin and its environs.
The cultists were still openly brandishing AK-47 rifles, machetes, battle axes, broken bottles, clubs and other dangerous weapons in broad daylight, while always shooting sporadically throughout the night, thereby heightening tension in Benin and its environs.
Edo police commissioner Babatunde Kokumo has urged residents of the Southsouth state not to panic, but to go about their lawful businesses, while assuring of adequate protection of lives and property.