Enugu: Alleged ritual victims are our members – Keke riders

The Tricycle Riders’ Association, popularly known as “Keke Riders”, on Wednesday expressed great shock over the loss of three of its members to the alleged ritual killing at Ugwuaji in Enugu State.
Names of the victims were given as Babangida Sale, Ashahabu Dauda and Ismahil Abdulahi.
Speaking when he led the executive members of the association on a condolence visit to the Enugu Central Mosque at Asata Enugu, Chairman of the union, Comrade Ikah Benjamin Ejiofor described the gruesome murder of the keke riders as “most wicked and despicable.”
DAILY POST recalls that three dead bodies were on Monday exhumed from the foundation of a building project, located at the Enugu-Port Harcourt Express Way.
Comrade Ejiofor, who was moved to tears, described the killing as most barbaric and against the principles of life.
According to him, “our members are rendering very important service to the society and it is so bad that the same people we are serving should turn back to treat us this way.
“We are grieved so much over this colossal loss and that is why we are here to commiserate with the Hausa community in Enugu. We are indeed in this tragedy together; we are so much pained.”
Giving insight into the incident, he said the Keke riders left their different units on Saturday but never returned, adding that, “a search party was later organized and that is the result of what we saw on Monday.
“At this moment, our plea to security agents is that this evil doers should not go unpunished; no stone should be left untouched in a bid to bring the perpetrators of this dastardly act to book.
“We cannot categorically say whether they were killed for ritual or not, because even their tricycles have not been found; so, we are leaving that aspect for security agents”.
He advised keke riders to henceforth stop picking people for drop to isolated areas.
In a remark, one of the leaders of the Hausa Community in Enugu, A.A Sambo, described the death of their brothers as most shocking.
“We lack words with which to describe this situation; is so sad that vibrant young men left home in the morning in search for daily bread but never returned alive; it so sad that they were hacked to death in such manner”, he lamented.
Meanwhile, one of those who participated in the search further disclosed that apart from the fresh bodies of the three keke riders, there were about five other human skeletons.
“We even saw some female bags at that scene, which suggests that some women must have also fallen victims,” he disclosed