The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Mob attack

  • Mob attacks driver after crushing pupil in Ibadan

    A teenage secondary school girl was Wednesday crushed to death by a driver of one of the Oyo State-owned mass transit buses, popularly known as Ajumose in Ibadan, the Oyo state capital.

    The incident which attracted scores of other students, led to a mob attack on the bus.

    All the windscreen, side mirror, and parts of the bus were smashed by angry mob who swooped on the driver of the bus.

    The driver of the bus, a middle aged man, however escaped death after sustaining severe injuries.

    The sad event which occurred around Mokola area of Ibadan on Wednesday saw many people running towards the bus parked in front of Lafia Hospital.

    The unidentified driver was said to have also injured some other pupils in the accident that happened after schools closed for the day.

    An eyewitness, Isaac Ajibade, said the bus was damaged by the mob, who seized the driver before he could escape from the scene.

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    He said, “The traffic was light and there were many pupils who were going home. Suddenly, the bus appeared and hit the pupils, killing a secondary school girl immediately. Passengers in the bus quickly alighted but the driver was grabbed by the angry mob. He was beaten before the police came to rescue him from the mob.”

    The Oyo State Police Public Relations Officer, Adekunle Ajisebutu, who confirmed the accident, said the driver was recovering at Police Hospital in Eleyele, Ibadan.

    He said, “The erring driver is in our custody. He has been taken to the Police Hospital, Eleyele for medical attention following attack on him by angry mob before the arrival of the police who eventually rescued him. The corpse of the schoolgirl had been deposited at Alafia Hospital morgue for autopsy. Meanwhile, discreet investigation has commenced in earnest.”

  • Policemen escape death after mob attack

    Policemen escape death after mob attack

    Two policemen serving in Ondo State escaped death in the hands of a mob in Edo State after the suspects they were pursuing cried out that they were fake.
    The Nation learnt the suspects, after fleeing to Ibillo in Akoko-Edo Local Government, told residents the men in police uniform were kidnappers, who wanted to abduct a former council Chairman, Folorunsho Akerejola.
    A source said without verifying the identities of the men, the mob beat them up.
    The source said elders, who intervened, prevented the embattled policemen from being lynched and handed them over to policemen in the community, who identified them.
    Police spokesman Moses Nkombe said the men have been confirmed to be policemen on patrol.
    He said they were attacked after a suspect, who was fleeing from a neighbouring state, raised a false alarm that he was being chased by kidnappers.
    Nkombe said the policemen sustained minor injuries.

  • Nigerian brothers recount mob attack in India

    The Amalawa brothers were wandering through a mall in a New Delhi suburb when the phone rang with warnings from a friend: Hurry home, mobs of Indians are attacking Africans across the area.
    The brothers, Nigerians who came to India to seek better education and work opportunities, rushed out and tried to hail an autorickshaw, just as a mob of Indian men saw them and ran toward them. The Amalawas ran back inside the mall but dozens of screaming men followed them. Precious Amalawa hid inside a changing room but Endurance got dragged out.
    “They attacked him with bricks, sticks, belts,” 23-year-old Precious said Friday as he sat, still stiff with shock and fear, in their apartment. Endurance’s body was dotted with medical staples – on his temple, his cheek and both arms. Precious’ arms were covered in cuts and bruises from when the mob chased him from his hiding place by shoving sharp objects through the changing room’s thin walls.
    The violence started March 24 when a teenage boy disappeared in Greater Noida, outside New Delhi, and angry relatives claimed he had been killed by his Nigerian neighbours. A mob of people began searching the area for Africans, with some accusing kidnappers of eating the boy.
    The boy returned home Saturday morning. He died later that day of what police said was a drug overdose.
    Five men who had been charged with kidnapping and murder were let go within hours because police could find no evidence.
    But rumours about cannibalism swirled and mobs began to attack Africans across the suburb. The last attacks were reported Wednesday. There were reports of mobs pulling Africans out of taxi cabs and autorickshaws and assaulting them.
    In shaky cell phone videos of the attack on the Amalawa brothers last Monday afternoon, more than a dozen men can be seen brutally beating Endurance with whatever they could lay their hands on – one man smashed a large metal trash can repeatedly on his torso and head. Another man used a collapsible metal chair to hit the cowering man as he lay on the ground. The snap of leather belts can be heard. One man even attempts a selfie with the violence in the background.
    Endurance, 21, wouldn’t talk about the attack at all as he sat, still tense with fear, in the sparsely furnished apartment.
    The African Students’ Association in India asked Africans across the capital to remain alert and especially warned those living in Greater Noida from stepping out at all.
    “All African Students Studying in Greater Noida are hereby instructed to stay at home as the situation remains volatile,” the statement said.
    The association has been arranging food and water for African students in Greater Noida as most of them hide at home.
    Police say they have arrested five men for attacking the brothers and are searching for others. Police patrols in the area have been increased after India’s foreign minister asked that the local government ensure the safety of Greater Noida’s African population.
    Tens of thousands of Africans live and study in India, and newly built suburbs like Greater Noida especially draw students because they are home to several sprawling private universities.
    But prejudice and racism are near-constants. Skin colour and appearances are used to place people in India’s strict social order, and stereotyping of all African men as drug dealers and women as prostitutes is prevalent. Landlords shun Africans in all but the poorest neighbourhoods and charge them unusually high rent. And gang assaults are not uncommon.
    “We face street aggression, abuses. We also face difficulty in getting accommodation, we face difficulty in naturally integrating with the local community,” said Samuel Jack, the president of the African Students’ Association of India.
    “I just give you an example. I have Indian friends in my school, I have never visited their house and they have never ever decided to ask me: Where do you live? Can I come and see you?”
    The sufferings Africans experience daily go largely unnoticed, and Africans, most of whom are young students, also hesitate to complain and draw attention to themselves.
    That changed when a Congolese student was killed in a dispute over hiring an autorickshaw in New Delhi last year. Three men who insisted they had hired the vehicle beat him up and hit him on the head with a rock, killing him, according to police.
    The death made the city’s African students, diplomats and business owners’ rally together demanding quick justice. The African Heads of Mission in New Delhi asked the government to address “racism and Afro-phobia” in the country.
    Other examples of anti-African prejudice in India have occurred.
    Early last year a Tanzanian woman was beaten and stripped naked by a mob in Bangalore after a Sudanese student’s car hit an Indian woman. In 2014, a video of three African men being beaten inside a security booth at a New Delhi Metro station went viral. For several minutes a large mob beat the men with bare hands and sticks and shoes as they climbed up the walls of the glass booth in terror. The police were absent.
    These incidents made it to the local newspapers. Hundreds more do not.
    For Precious and Endurance Amalawa the memory of their suffering will be impossible to forget. Their fear is palpable even inside their home.
    When Endurance stepped out on the balcony to make a phone call, his brother’s eyes darted toward him.
    “Come back inside Eddy. Come inside,” he said calling him by his nickname.

  • Mob attacks alleged gays in Abuja

    Mob attacks alleged gays in Abuja

    An Abuja mob, wielding wooden clubs and iron bars and screaming to “cleanse” their neighbourhood of gay people, on Thursday dragged 14 young men from their beds and assaulted them, human rights activists claimed yesterday.

    Four of the victims were marched to a police station, where they allegedly were kicked and punched by police officers who yelled pejoratives at them, said Ifeanyi Orazulike of the International Centre on Advocacy for the Right to Health.

    The Police operatives threatened that the men would be incarcerated for 14 years, which he said, the maximum prison sentence under the new Same Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act, dubbed the “Jail the Gays” law.

    “Since the Same Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act was signed, we have expressed concern as a friend of Nigeria that it might be used by some to justify violence against Nigerians based on their sexual orientation,” the U.S. Embassy said in a statement at the weekend. “Recent attacks in Abuja deepen our concern on this front.”

    The police spokeswoman for the Federal Capital Territory, Deputy Superintendent Altine Daniel, said she was unaware of the attack but would try to get details.

    Orazulike said he got a panicked email from a colleague who said he was hiding from a mob of 40 people who struck around 1 a.m. Thursday, going from house to house saying their mission was “to cleanse” the area of gays. He said they used pieces of wood and iron to beat up 14 young men. Orazulike said he drove from his home at 4 a.m. to save the man in Gishiri, a shantytown with mud roads near central Abuja.

    Those attacked are in hiding and too scared to speak to reporters, he said, recounting their story.

    “They were told ‘If you come back, we will kill you.’”

    The walls of houses where the men lived have been painted with graffiti declaring “Homosexuals, pack and leave,” he said.

    Orazulike said he went to the police station later on Thursday and met with a senior officer who ordered the four men released because there was no evidence that they were gay and they had not been caught having sex.

    Four of them were severely injured and others suffered bruises, he said. They were treated at his organisation’s clinic because they were afraid to go to the hospital.

    “They said the police slapped and kicked them and swore at them,” he said.

    Dorothy Aken’Ova, executive director of Nigeria’s International Centre for Reproductive Health and Sexual Rights, said she stayed up all night Wednesday trying to get police and Civil Defence to send officers to the scene after she got a phone call from a man who was being attacked.

    “Instead of helping them, apparently some of them were arrested,” she told AP. “None of the (law enforcement) agents responded to our distress calls.”

    Dozens of allegedly gay people have been arrested since President Goodluck Jonathan signed the bill into law in January. It not only forbids gay marriage, which carries a 14-year jail sentence, it makes it a crime for anyone, straight or homosexual, to hold a meeting of gays or to advocate human rights for gays. Convicted offenders can be jailed for up to 10 years.

    The U.S. President Barack Obama’s initiative to promote the rights of homosexuals has been rebuffed in Africa, where Uganda also is considering a draconian law carrying penalties of up to life imprisonment for certain gay acts. Many Africans believe homosexuality is an evil import from the West.

    However, the U.S. ambassador to Nigeria, James F. Entwistle, on a recent radio programme assured Nigerians that the United States would not be cutting aid because of the new anti-gay law.