By Ben Agande, Dayo Johnson, Ola Ajayi & Jimitota Onoyume
Posted to the Web: Friday, December 22, 2006

Seventeen of the victims died at dawn yesterday in a motor accident on the Akure-Ondo road after two commercial vehicles carrying market women and traders to Akure and Ondo collided.

Vanguard gathered that the crash which involved two Toyota Hiace commercial buses occurred at about 6.30a.m. at Wasimi village. Only three passengers survived the accident. They are now on the danger list at the State Specialist Hospital.

The Ondo State Sector Commander of the Federal Road Safety Commission, Mr. Ahmed Hassan, attributed the crash to excessive speeding by the drivers of the two vehicles, who also lost their lives. “One of the vehicles was trying to overtake another when it had a head-on collision with the on-coming commercial bus,” he said.

Passersby and other motorists used cutlasses, axes and other sharp objects to cut open the vehicles before the trapped bodies of victims could be removed. Hassan added that 11 men and six women, mostly traders, died in the accident. Most of the victims were Igbo traders.
The bodies of the victims have already been deposited at the mortuary of the State Specialist Hospital in Ondo.

Friends and relations rushed to the hospital as news of the accident broke. They wailed and cried as they identified the victims.

Robbers kill 7cops in Ibadan
In the second incident — a robbery operation in Ibadan — bandits went on the rampage at Agbowo area of the city where they attacked two banks and killed seven policemen.
The robbers numbering 30 reportedly arrived Agbowo at about midnight and fired three shots to warn residents that they were around before launching their operation.

When Vanguard visited the scene yesterday, there were two police vans and a blue car marked LAGOS CA 225 GGE riddled with bullets. One of the vehicles with number plate PF 874 HQ was stained with blood. There were also blood stains at the gates of the University of Ibadan.
The robbers who operated between midnight and 3:40a.m. also trailed another police van marked 033 and riddled it with bullets.

The deadly acts left some traders in the area losing goods worth millions of naira as a result of fire that gutted their shops. The fire was triggered off when the robbers shot at the tank of another police van which exploded and burnt no fewer than 18 shops by the roadside.
Confirming the incident, the Police Public Relations Officer, Mr. Olu Akinmoladun, said only two policemen were killed while four others were lying critically wounded at the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan.

He said: “Around 1:00a.m., we got a distress call that there was a bank robbery at Agbowo area. So, we mobilised our patrol team from the metropolis. But along the line, two of our police vans ran into an ambush laid by the robbers and we lost two of our men, while four others are lying critically ill in the UCH now. We lost one patrol man and a driver.”
Overwhelmed by the superior firepower of the robbers, the police had to use an Armoured Personnel Carrier to repel the attack. Sources in the area said some policemen escaped into the campus of UI when the firepower of the robbers was too much to bear.

Asked if any arrest was made, Akinmoladun answered in the negative but said the hoodlums had their own casualties. “At the end, we succeeded in chasing the hoodlums away, but they succeeded in robbing one of the banks,” he said.
A night guard who narrowly escaped being killed said when the robbers arrived, they first fired three warning shots and went straight to two commercial banks close to the University of Ibadan.
He said they held the security men of the banks hostage and directed them to open the gates of the bank. They were up to 30, fully armed men and women.
Vanguard later gathered that the robbers used a welding machine to break the vaults and carted away an undisclosed amount of money.

Two of the shop owners counted their losses as a result of the fire incident. They said 18 shops containing electronics like deep freezers, cookers, and many other electric gadgets worth over N5 million were burnt. One of the victims said she had only a days before stocked her shop with goods worth about N500,000.

Militants kill 3 cops
Also yesterday, armed militants in speedboats killed three policemen in an overnight attack on a residential facility belonging to French oil company, Total.
“In Obagi, we have three deaths among the policemen guarding the facility”, a company spokesman at the group’s headquarters in France said, adding that no Total employee had been killed.
“This was not a political attack, it was a case of banditry. There were no hostages taken,” he added.
No one has so far claimed responsibility for the attack.

An industry official speaking on condition of anonymity said the attack at Obagi, outside the Rivers State capital, Port Harcourt, was carried out by masked men who stormed the place in speed boats.
Total is the fifth largest oil operator in Nigeria.
A second car on Monday hit a facility owned by Italian firm Agip. Neither blast caused any casualties and material damage was minimal. The Rivers government said in a statement it had held a security meeting with Shell and Agip over the incidents.

Meanwhile, the Asari Dokubo-led Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force in an online statement yesterday called for the immediate release of its detained leader. Threatening violence in the region, it said the release was the only condition for peace. The statement reads: “We foresee an exodus of heavily armed young men from the creeks into the streets of Port Harcourt. We foresee an increased number of explosions in corporate establishments, government buildings and government motorcades. We foresee deaths and assassinations.”