Enugu killings: Keke riders identify victims

Tricycle association demands justice, commiserates with Hausa community
IT was too bizarre to be hidden for too long; the story of the three decomposing corpses and a human skull exhumed from a building in the Ugwuaji area of Enugu State on Tuesday. Yesterday, the Tricycle Riders’ Association (TRA), popularly known as ‘Keke Riders’, identified the three victims in the suspected ritual killing as their members.

This was as the Police in Enugu said yesterday that it had intensified efforts to identify and arrest the owner of the said building, where the three bodies were exhumed.

Speaking when he led the executive members of the association on a condolence visit to the Enugu Central Mosque at Asata Enugu, chairman of the union, Ikah Benjamin Ejiofor, described the gruesome murder of the keke riders as “most wicked and despicable”.

He gave names of the victims as Babangida Sule, Ashahabu Dauda and Ismahil Abdulahi.

It would be re-called that three dead bodies were on Monday exhumed from the foundation of a building project, located at the Enugu-Port Harcourt Expressway.

Ejiofor, who was moved to tears, described the killing as most barbaric and against the principles of life.

According to him, “Our members are rendering very important service to the society and it is so bad that the same people we are serving will turn back to treat us this way.

“We are grieved so much over this colossal loss and that is why we are here to commiserate with the Hausa community in Enugu. We are, indeed, in this tragedy together; we are so much pained,” he said.

Giving insight into the incident, Ejiofor said the Keke riders left their different units on Saturday but never returned, adding that “a search party was later organized and that is the result of what we saw on Monday.

“At this moment, our plea to security agents is that this evil should not go unpunished; no stone should be left unturned in a bid to bring the perpetrators of this dastardly act to book. We cannot categorically say whether they were killed for ritual or not, because even their tricycles have not been found. So, we are leaving that aspect for security agents.”

He advised keke riders to henceforth stop picking people or dropping passengers at isolated areas.

In his remark, one of the leaders of the Hausa community in Enugu, A.A. Sambo, described the death of their brothers as most shocking.

“We lack words with which to describe this situation. It is so sad that vibrant young men left home in the morning in search for daily bread but never returned alive; it so sad that they were hacked to death in such manner,” he lamented.

Meanwhile, one of those who participated in the search further disclosed that apart from the fresh bodies of the three keke riders, there were about five other human skeletons.

“We even saw some female bags at the scene, which suggests that some women must have also fallen victims,” he disclosed.

Police Public Relations Office in Enugu State, Ebere Amaraizu, said the command would do all at their disposal to unmask the owner of the building, stressing that already investigations have been intensified to unravel the cause of the murder.