Tony Osauzo, Benin
Residents of Benin, the Edo State capital, are resorting to self help, following increase in violent crimes occasioned by police withdrawal from the roads in protest against attack on them and burning of police stations across the state by hoodlums who hijacked the recent EndSARS protest in the state.
Consequently, a mob, yesterday, lynched two suspected armed robbers and set them ablaze for alleged robbery.
The two suspected robbers were apprehended near Okah Market, the road by Ighodefeyi Road along Upper Sokponba Road, where they were beaten with clubs and set ablaze by the youths believed to be from the area.
“They came out early in the morning and they were robbing market women going to the market and other early risers going to their work places. There have been regular cases of robbery around Sokponba Road here because the three police stations along this road namely St Saviour, Ugbegun and Idogbo have been burnt and destroyed. There is no single presence of police post or any other security agency here”, an eye witness said.
In another incident, a suspected armed robber was almost mobbed yesterday when he went into the banking hall of a new generation bank along Sapele Road and took two bales of N200,000 behaving like a staff of the bank.
He said to have been sighted by a woman customer who later raised an alarm and the man was apprehended.
Two knives were reportedly recovered from him and he was rescued by the bank security and later taken to the Edo State Police Command.
Meanwhile, a Point of Sale (PoS) operator was allegedly shot by gunmen when she resisted them as they wanted to forcefully collect cash from her, just as a Toyota Camry car was reportedly snatched at gunpoint along Mission Road on Sunday around 5 pm while another car was snatched by Uwasota in Ugbowo same day.
Recall that Obaseki had on Monday appealed to the police to go back to work, promising to purchase patrol vans and rebuild the destroyed police stations and pay the medical bills of personnel injured.