PBA ReporterTwo persons who are in their late 30s were lynched to death for vandalising electricity distribution infrastructure in Aba, Abia State, while their accomplice managed to escape.
Prime Business Africa reports that this incident happened in Okpulor Umuobo, a village in Osisioma Ngwa Local Government Area.
The names of the two electricity cable and wire thieves were not obtained as of press time, but it was understood that one of them came from Okpulor Umuobo village where he was reputed for years to be a terror. The other hailed from Ogbor Hill in Abia South LGA.
They were caught by the eagle-eyed village vigilante team who overpowered the vandals and arrested them together with an 18-seater Hiace bus they came in.
“The vigilante men kept the criminals in their custody and invited both officers of the Nigeria Police Force and Geometric Security Services Ltd around 7 a.m.”, said an eyewitness who didn’t want her name revealed in the press for fear of victimization by other criminals in Aba and environs.
“Fearing that the security teams would take away the two thieves, the villagers descended on the criminals, attacking them with matchetes and clubs”.
Even though the police officers from the Abayi Division and the security men from Geometric Services, a subsidiary of Geometric Power that owns Aba Power, arrived within 15 minutes of being informed of the arrest of the criminals, the two vandals were almost dead when the teams reached there, according to the eyewitness.
The villagers were so angry with the thieves that they were removing a bus load of aluminum conductor which Aba Power installed less than a month ago at a high cost, according to Mike Nwocha, a community leader.
“In fact,” revealed Nkwocha, “the crowd wanted to burn the bus used by the thieves to convey the stolen materials, but he and his colleagues, “including the policemen sent by the Divisional Police Officer of Abayi, Superintendent Okwudili Idoko, pleaded with them not to do so because that would mean incinerating the company’s materials which the gallant vigilante members collected from the vandals”.
Meanwhile, an appeal has gone to stakeholders in nine of the 17 local government areas in Abia State serviced by Aba Power Distribution Company not to take the laws into their hands, no matter the level of provocation by criminals who destroy critical public infrastructure, including electricity distribution materials.
A respected security consultant, Nick Orjiudeh, a retired Air Commodore with the Nigerian Air Force, gave the advice while speaking to journalists in Aba against the background of the mob action against the electricity infrastructure vandals.
If the Okpulor Umuobo community had handed over the “suspects to the men from the police force or the Geometric Security services”, he argued, “the security men would have used their training, skills and experience to easily obtain information about their accomplice who escaped.
READ ALSO: Security Operatives Arrest Electricity Vandals In Aba
“What is more, the security men would have utilised their knowledge and skills and experience to trace the persons to whom they sell stolen materials and the very people who provide them with the logistics to damage critical infrastructure, and the logistics here include the stores or places where such materials are kept before they are disposed off”.
Speaking on the development, Engr Commodore Orjiudeh, decried the spate of attacks on public infrastructure, wondering why people would vandalise metals on the newly constructed Second Niger Bridge in Onitsha, Anambra State, and Aba Power transformers and accessories.
“Life would be harder in the Southeast without the Second Niger Bridge and Aba Power,” Orjiudeh asserted.
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