Two people were shot dead during a clash between mobile police officers and ‘area boys' on Thursday at Adekunle, Yaba. According eyewitnesses and residents of the area, the clash ensued at about 1pm when police officers stormed a large parcel of land near Adekunle junction to demolish shacks occupied by some area boys.
The area boys were said to have fought the police officers and seriously injured one of them, then the police regrouped from the State Criminal Investigation Department which is nearby and came back shooting a combination of canisters and bullets.
According to Olayinka Adewuyi, a resident of the area, the police officers were brought by the owner of the land to chase the area boys away so that he can develop it.
"What happened is that the area boys have been staying there since. You know they smoke all manner of things there, they do drugs there and that's where they have been living. But the man that bought the land has asked them to leave since but they said he has to pay them enough money for them to get another house. I heard that the man has paid some of them N10, 000 each and they said it is not enough. So they have been having problems with the man and he decided to use police to drive them away" he said.
"So when the police came the first time, the area boys fought them and injured one of their Oga, so the mobile police people, RRS they came and the areas ran away but they shot one boy dead." The mobile police officers belonging to Rapid Respond Squad, RRS, who were heavily armed, who garrisoned the Adekunle Junction till late evening, intermittently charged at the residents and passersby who had come out to watch and sympathise and they ran away for fear of stray bullet.
As shop owner closed up and parents took their kids away to safer faraway, a soldier who did not give his name, enter his car and left nearby Makoko where he was visiting.
"Though I'm a soldier but I know this people, they will come and raid this place and arrest innocent people and before you explain that you are a soldier they would have done what you will not expect. When I stopped joking with things like this is when I was sitting with a friend and a stray bullet came from somewhere and killed him" he said.
Though, the soldier's prediction did not happen exactly as at press time some eyewitnesses said police had earlier arrested many people in the neighbourhood including old men and old women.
The already tensed mood in the neighbourhood was heightened when another body of one of the area boys was discovered at the scene. Many people including the area boys who were puffing large wraps of marijuana, started crying, as the bodies were taken away in a commercial bus.
Source:234next
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