A human rights activist, Orchardson Umoh has called on Police to re-open the 2018 Ayilamo case, where operatives were ambushed and killed in Benue state.
In his petition addressed to the IGP, Kayode Egbetokun, and made available to newsmen in Calabar on Wednesday, Umoh, a lawyer, said that seven years after the incident, peace had eluded the survivors of the attack as well as the families of the deceased officers.
He recalled in the petition that 23 policemen deployed from Mopol Unit 33 in Ado Ekiti and Imo Safer Highway Unit to the community to protect lives and properties were ambushed during an operation.
He explained that during the attack, 12 of them were killed while some were captured by either militias or bandits.
Umoh reminded the IGP of the incident, saying that the despair of the families of the deceased and the missing officers widely occupied the media space as at the time.
‘’Sadly, it appears that not enough attention had been given to this incident.’’
‘’The scale of the entire incident demanded that such questions like, ‘what actually happened, how it happened, who were involved and the actions taken,’ should be asked and answered,’’ he said.
Umoh called for proper investigations into the incident in order to determine any factor that contributed or culminated in the incident and also identify any safety or operational policies that might have been violated.
He also called for the recovery of the corpses of those who died in the incident for proper burial while the survivors and deceased families should be protected and catered for.
NAN
