Inspector General of police, Muhammed Abubakar
GUNMEN midnight Monday stormed an off-campus residence of students of the Federal Polytechnic, Mubi, Adamawa State, and shot dead 23 students.
Also, three other persons, including a retired soldier, a guard and father of a studfent, lost their lives in the orgy of killing with a total of 25 felled victims.
The murdered students were said to have been called out by their killers. As a replacement for one of their targets, the gunmen killed the father.
Police on Tuesday confirmed the number of deaths even as students were said to have deserted the campus of the polytechnic. The police also said five others sustained serious injuries and were receiving treatment in the hospital.
Commissioner of Police in Adamawa, Godfrey Okeke, confirmed to our correspondent on the phone that 26 corpses had been deposited in the mortuary.
Okeke said the killers came with a hit list with which they identified their targets before gunning them down.
According to him, the police had commenced investigations into the killings and detectives were exploring wide angles to identify the motives for the attacks and the perpetrators and their sponsors.
The CP said, “It was around 2am that one of my officers told me about the attack in Mubi and I asked him to find out what happened. We learnt that the attackers came with a list and were calling out the names of their victims whom they either shoot or slaughter.
“This morning (Tuesday), I went to the scene with the SSS director and Brigade of Guards Commander and we saw 26 bodies on the ground. They have been deposited in the mortuary and we have commenced investigations into the incident.”
Asked why the operatives of the Joint Taskforce who have been in charge of security in the area did not respond to the sound of gunshots, Okeke said the JTF men were not aware of the incident because the gunmen muffled the sounds of their gunshots and also used knives to slaughter some of their victims to avoid detection.
He said the police would explore all possibilities, including the fact that the killings might have been sponsored by participants in the student union elections that held last Saturday at the Federal Polytechnic.
“We are exploring all angles in our investigations; you know there was a student union election at the school last Saturday, so we will investigate this angle too to know whether there is a link to the killings,” he said.
Public Relations Officer of the Adamawa State command of the Nigeria Police, Mohammed Ibrahim, had earlier confirmed to the News Agency of Nigeria that 25 people were killed, 19 of them students of the Federal Polytechnic.
“We are just leaving Mubi with the Commissioner of Police and the Brigade Commander. Nineteen students were killed… all in all 25 persons were killed. Although the investigation is continuing, there are signs that there may have been some internal factors. But we cannot prove it until we complete our investigation”, Saharareporters quoted Ibrahim to have said on the phone.
A resident however told NAN that students of both the polytechnic and those of the nearby School of Health Technology lived in the affected hostel.
Spokesman for the National Emergency Management Agency, Yushua Shuaib, also confirmed the incident though he couldn’t confirm the casualty figure.
Shuaib told a news agency that police were investigating the possibilities that the killings were as a result of rivalry between factions in the students’ union election in the polytechnic.
Shuaib was quoted as saying that the attack had been probably launched by a faction not satisfied with the election.
“The crisis in Mubi is suspected to have been fuelled by campus politics after an election at the Federal Polytechnic,” the NEMA spokesperson said.
Abdulkarim Bello of the Red Cross said, “They were conducting elections in the Federal Polytechnic and unknown gunmen just entered and sprayed people with bullets”.
A student, who was said to have refused to give his name, reportedly told saharareporters that the gunmen were wearing military uniforms, and were calling out the names of individual students before killing them.
The student said that after surrounding the compound around midnight, the gunmen started taking the students outside, ascertaining their names and shooting them, while others butchered the bodies with sharp knives. The mutilated corpses were left lined up in the courtyard.
The student said the killings were likely to have a connection with last Sunday’s Student Union Government election, which was said to have been contested on regional grounds between Northern and Southern students in the institution.
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Source : punchng[dot]com
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