Posted by By BONIFACE NZAMA, Calabar on
Following Friday's bloodbath in Lagos involving Odua Peoples Congress (OPC) and commercial drivers, factionals leader of the militant group, Dr. Frederick Faseun and Otunba Ganiyu Adams, were yesterday arrested.
Following Friday's bloodbath in Lagos involving Odua Peoples Congress (OPC) and commercial drivers, factionals leader of the militant group, Dr. Frederick Faseun and Otunba Ganiyu Adams, were yesterday arrested.
The duo were first taken to the State Criminal Investigation Department (SCID), Panti, Yaba, Lagos before being flown to Abuja.
Also arrested was the chairman of the Iyana-Ipaja branch of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), Alhaji Faula Saka.
The police high command in Abuja, it was gathered, was peeved by what was described as the impunity with which the OPC men and NURTW members unleashed reign of terror on Iyana-Ipaja, a Lagos suburb Friday.
Death toll in the fracas was put at 10 while no fewer than twenty vehicles were either burnt or vandalized.
Confirming their arrest to Sunday Sun on phone, the deputy Commissioner of Police in charge of SCID, Mr. Olayinka Balogun, said Faseun and Adams were being held in connecting with the Friday mayhem.
Corroborating Balogun, a senior officer at the State Command, Ikeja said: 'There are some things they (the detainees) need to explain to us. So, we had to arrest them. The IG (Inspector General of Police) said we should bring them to him in Abuja. We have subsequently taken them to Abuja."
There were still conflicting accounts on the real cause of the Friday bloodbath. A version says it was triggered by a supremacy tussle between two factions of the OPC over the control of the Iyana-Ipaja motor park. Another theory says it was caused by a commercial motorcyclist popularly known as Okada who happened to belong to one of the factions said to have refused to register his motor-cycle with the park.
Alleging incessant harassment in the hands of officials of the park, the said Okada operator, as the account goes, decided to mobilize his own supporters to launch a reprisal attack on the park starting from 4 a.m Friday.
Normalcy was, however, restored when Area G Police Commander, Mr. Ahmed Fakorede, an Assistant Commissioner of Police, stormed the place with a combined team of armed soldiers and police.
Meanwhile, uneasy calm pervaded the Iyana-Ipaja area yesterday as residents counted their loses.