By Ishaya Ibrahim/Lagos
Residents of Emohua in Rivers State have sought divine intervention to end the three-year cycle of killings in their community.
Over 2,000 of them gathered for a prayer session on April 24 for God to solve the problem, which they say has defied all human efforts, including those of the police.
Emohua Council of Chiefs Chairman, Goddy Onuekwa, told TheNiche that they are by prayer rededicating their land to God.
“We have just finished prayers to God where 100 ministers of God prayed and over 2,000 people gathered. We prayed for God to deliver our land. We have rededicated our land to God. Nothing will happen,” he said.
The killings have sent jitters down the spine of members of the community.
One of them, Sergeant Awuse, a member of the state Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), said he found the killings incomprehensible.
“I heard it is the cult boys. I’m in Abuja, so I don’t even have comprehensive knowledge of what is happening there. But I hear that it is cult boys. Please ask these people to lay down their arms and let them talk to people please!
“These things are not good. They are just destroying the place. We don’t need these kinds of activities,” he pleaded.
Asked if he knows what the cult members want, he said: “That is the point. They have been asking them (the cultists) and they haven’t said anything.
“They just come out and kill their colleagues. I don’t know why. That’s what I have been told and I don’t know why.”
Rival cults in Emohua have engaged in fratricide in the last three years in a war for supremacy. Beheadings are common.
The intervention of Police Commissioner Tunde Ogunsakin has not helped.
He met the council of chiefs two weeks ago, yet the killings have persisted.