In early June 2022, dozens of gunmen burst in, through a motorcycles to Awo village of Esan North East Local Government Area of Edo State, shooting at random and chasing down residents and more than 18 survived the massacre, despite suffering gunshot wounds.
“I tried to run away when I felt the bullet hit me, another was shot but did not die, three of us are alive, only one died among us then they killed other people in the town,” the young man Monday James lamented to Metrodaily.com sitting on his general hospital bed in Uromi, a huge bandage around his head.
Another Sunday Timothy a local vigilante with visible wound on his upper lip and a bandage on the right side of his chest expressed his odeal and feels lucky to be alive. “Each motorbike was carrying at least two well-armed men on the back.
Metrodaily. Com They were shooting at people sporadically, I ran for a while but I had to stop and I raised up my hands, they shot at me, I dropped down, they thought I had died.
I was short of breath, I saw them killing three other people in front of me, one of Them is from my village, I known him very well, Albert Akota, Isaac Danladi, Obinna Kanu but my younger sister told me they did not death that they escaped to nearby town,” he said.
When law enforcement arrived, they found the bodies of more than 100 villagers after the large-scale attacks, a symbol of the country’s difficulty in curbing gang violence.
“If drastic measures are not taken I am sure that the operation going on now will push them the bandit to stage another war in Nigeria,” Audu Momoh, a village Chief, said.
The operation in June 2022 against villages in Edo State, these attacks are the deadliest this year and are attributed to heavily armed criminal gangs, the “bandits. “
“You are all aware that we have been conducting a series of large-scale operations in the South- South region all under division of the Nigerian army.
The violence has evolved from clashes between herders and farmers over resources into a broader conflict fueled by arms trafficking.
Everyday Killing has become a “normal” phenomenon with mass abductions and raids by “bandits” making headlines, with a death toll that rivals that of the jihadist insurgency in the northeast.