Posted by VINCENT ADEKOYE Benin on
Three students of Ambrose Alli University Ekpoma (AAU) have been confirmed dead and five others on danger list after rival cult groups unleashed violence on the University last Tuesday night.
Three students of Ambrose Alli University Ekpoma (AAU) have been confirmed dead and five others on danger list after rival cult groups unleashed violence on the University last Tuesday night.
Spokesman of Edo State Police Command, Mr. Peter Ogboi confirmed the clash.
Already, the university community had been deserted as most of the students who lived in off campus hostels did not feel safe anymore.
Daily Champion gathered at the university that an alumnus of the university who was a popular member of a cult group, was attacked at a popular eatery outside the campus.
This, a source said, led to a free-for-all that snowballed into a cult war in which guns and other dangerous weapons were used throughout the night.
Public Relations Officer of the university, Dr Don Akhilomen, also confirmed the development on phone saying that three students were killed while five sustained serious injuries.
According to him, trouble started when a former student was attacked at the venue of a party organised by the Black Axe Confraternity at a popular joint (name withheld).
The beating led to reprisal attacks in which two people were shot dead while another was hacked to death in a most gruesome manner at dawn and his body left in the open.
The shot students was identified while the former student who was attacked, was identified by his nickname Kalaka.
Akhilomen said he could not confirm if those killed were students of the institution because the incident happened outside the university campus. He said investigation had just started.
Daily Champion further gathered that the cult war involved members of the Black Axe and the Eiye confraternities.
Specifically, the source accused the police of slow response when the violence and shooting started. He said that the Edo State Police Command and other security agencies in the state should by now have posted plain-clothes officers to the institution.
It would be recalled that no fewer than 20 students have been killed in different cult clashes that have made the institution notorious as the operational base of cult groups in the Country.