Policemen attached to the Taraba State Police Command have been accused of killing a driver and his conductor on the Jalingo-Wukari Road.
The incident reportedly happened around 6pm on Sunday when the policemen allegedly mounted a checkpoint in the area. The trailer driver and his assistant were reportedly killed followed their refusal to part with a N500 bribe demanded by the policemen at the checkpoint.
According to an internet news portal, eagleonline, the victims were shot dead very close to Wukari,
which led to a protest by other trailer drivers.
A Twitter user, austynzogs around 8am on Monday wrote, “Protesting tipper drivers have caused heavy traffic along Jalingo-Wukari Road in Taraba State.”
He later told PUNCH Metro that some soldiers deployed in the area, to quell the unrest, shot at the protesting tipper drivers.
Efforts by officials of the Federal Road Safety Corps to remove the debris dumped on the road were said to have been resisted by the drivers.
“Most of the trailer drivers are said to be heading towards South East to deliver cows to markets in the zone,” a source said.
When contacted on the development, the state’s Police Public Relations Officer, Kwaji Joseph, denied that the police killed anyone, adding that rather, the police lost one of its men to the fracas.
He said:
“On Sunday at about 6.45pm, our patrol team that was on stop-and-search intercepted a trailer coming from Jalingo and heading towards Wukari. As you know, the police have the power to check and interrogate to know where they were coming from and where they were going.
That particular area has been in crisis for some time now. But the trailer driver and his passengers, numbering about 50, came down from the trailer and attacked our policemen. They said the President (Mummamadu Buhari) had ordered a ban on checkpoints.
In the process, they killed one of our policemen, Corporal Sunday Ate, and stole his AK-47 and 50 rounds of ammunition.”
He said the Wukari Area Commander, on getting the information, mobilised more policemen to the scene, who recovered the weapon and put the situation under control.
Joseph explained that the only corpse recovered some distance away from the scene of the incident was that of an unidentified man.
“We recovered another corpse about 150 metres away from the scene of the incident. The police were not responsible for the death and we did not shoot at anybody,” he added.
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