Gunmen kills driver, kidnapped passengers in River state

A bus driver identified as Salvation Harr driving his passengers from the Mile One park in the Diobu area of Port Harcourt, was ambushed and killed with his passengers kidnapped.

The unidentified gunmen instantly shot the commercial bus driver dead and went away with eight of his passengers in the Abonema/Degema/EmuohaEmuoha/Kalabari area of the East-West Road in Rivers State.

It driver was travelling to Buguma before he was ambushed on one of the bad spots.

It was gathered that after the gun men shot the driver, they mmediately took all passengers into a forest on Saturday night, even as they fired shots into the air to ward off any threat and escaped unchallenged.

The Punch later learnt that one of the kidnapped travellers was freed after parting with about N150,000, while others were still in captivity.

A driver who spoke with Punch on anonymity grounds said the police had shown nonchalant attitude to the insecurity issues in the area.
“We had protested on our Kalabari-Emuoha-Buguma road because of the series of kidnap incidents and the shooting of our drivers and passengers.

“Even the Commissioner of Police sent a representative. After then, there has been an increase in kidnapping attempts and incidents.

“But yesterday, the worst of it happened. They (miscreants) killed one of our drivers by name Salvation Harry, who is from Buguma. As I am talking to you now, he is in the Buguma mortuary. And the occupants of the vehicle are in the bush with the kidnappers.

“We don’t really know what to do because we have lost confidence in the government. They cannot protect lives and property again.

He said, “The police on their part are just concerned about collecting money they will collect from drivers and exploiting passengers.

“Their concern is the number of illegally refined products they will carry. Otherwise we have not seen a situation whereby we have nine to ten security checkpoints on that road, yet they killed our driver last night and took the occupants of the vehicle.

“We don’t know what will become the fate of the passengers in the bush. If they could kill the driver, then we don’t know the fate of the passengers.

“So, we are appealing to relevant authorities to come to our aid. We are law abiding citizens. This is where we feed our families and fend for ourselves.”