Abia State governor, Theodore Orji, has urged the police to ensure that nobody fingered in the brutal murder of a monarch in his state last week goes unpunished.
Government has appealed to Abia State’s Commissioner of Police, to thoroughly investigate the mystery behind the death of a traditional ruler in Umunneochi Local Government Area of the state, Eze Iroha Nwankwo, ensuring that his murders are brought to book.
Speaking to with newsmen on telephone, through the Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, Emma Nwabuko, Orji said that government will assist the command in its investigation because no death of any citizen of the state will go unpunished.
Newsmen investigations revealed that Eze Nwankwo of Ugwu Leru Community was confirmed dead after some irate youths in the area invaded his palace, ostensibly to vent their anger over issues arising from alleged unmitigated arrest by the police in the area.
It was gathered that two days before the incident, the police had allegedly invaded the community and apprehended two youths, who they detained at the Divisional Police Headquarters.
We were told that when the news reached the youths, they organised themselves and threatened to go on rampage if nothing was done to put paid to the incessant arrests.
The Transition Council Chairman, Dan Okoli, upon receiving the information on what the threat to rampage will portend for the community went to the Divisional Police Headquarters and was said to have taken the arrested youths on bail back to the community.
However, some miscreants allegedly insisted that the incessant arrests were the handiwork of the local vigilante group established by the traditional ruler on the orders of the State Government and began a systematic search for the members of the group.
It was learnt that when they could not lay hand on any of them, the irate youths decided to visit the traditional ruler, who on seeing them marching angrily towards his palace, panicked and took to his heels.
Sources disclosed that in an effort to scale the fence in the compound, he landed to the other side on his chest and being a little advanced in age, sustained serious internal wounds and died later in the hospital.
Police were informed of the incident and moved in to conduct an on the spot preliminary investigation, after which the matter was transferred to the Abia State Police Command Headquarters for further investigations.
Speaking further on the issue, Nwabuko insisted that the Transition Chairman had nothing to do with the incident since he acted in good faith and prevented a breakdown of law and order if the youths had gone on rampage.
He insisted that government was monitoring the investigation because the traditional ruler was mandated to set up the vigilance group and that government is interested to know the cause of his death, including the culprits.
But the family of the late monarch is blaming his murder on an alleged disagreement with Okoli, the council chief whom they said mobilised the thugs to club the traditional ruler to death at 65. The family insists that their patriarch was killed minutes after the youths were addressed by the council chief.
The police have arrested 19 youths alleged to have been directly involved in the act.
Son of the monarch Prince Samuel Iroha told an online publication in an interview in Umuahia that he was not at home when the incident happened, but that his mother who witnessed the ugly incident narrated the story to him.