From Laide Raheem, Abeokuta
Suspected gunmen have slaughtered two night guards attached to thecTotal filling station, Delabo Junction, Ilisan Remo in Ikenne Local Government, Ogun State.
The guards were said to have been killed on Sunday night and their bodies discovered in the pool of their blood early morning of Monday.
Daily Sun gathered that the assailants allegedly took nothing away from the filing station fuelling the suspicion that it might be a pure case of assassination.
The state police spokesperson, Abimbola Oyeyemi, told our correspondent that, “it was a pure case of armed robbery. The earlier report that the assailants just came to assassinate the guards was in incorrect. Search of the premises by the police revealed that the safe of the filling station was broken into.
“The two guards were sleeping on benches at the alignment section of the station when they were hacked to death by the robbers in order to gain entrance into the office housing the safe.”
He added that the robbers were able to break into the safe, but no money was found inside: “Efforts are on to apprehend the armed robbers with the view of making them to face the law.”
The incident caused palpable fear in the town coming on the heels of reported Hausa clash with police the previous Friday. The Hausa residents in the town had clashed with the police for refusing to hand over to them two armed robbery suspects.
The suspects attempted to steal a motorcycle belonging to one of them.
They wanted them handed over so that they could deal them fatal blow of jungle justice despite the police assuring that the robbery suspects would get the deserved treatment under the law.
The police, however, rebuffed them and declined the demand. But the gathering reportedly insisted to have their ways hurling stones and sticks at the police officers. The operatives were allegedly forced to fire shots into the air to disperse the rampaging youths.
It was gathered that the police had to call for reinforcement from other formations to quell the crisis. Some leaders from Yoruba and Hausa communities intervened to restore normalcy in the town.
Oyeyemi, however, flawed the insinuation that the killing of the two guards was in connection with the protest by the Hausa commercial motorcycle riders.