Female Corp members Harassed As Gunmen Raided NYSC Lodge
Another female Corps member, who also a victim betrayed emotion while narrating her ordeal with the hoodlums said her phones, laptop, cash were forcefully taken away from her after the hoodlums gained entrance into her room from the back door.
“You know at that period of the night, most of us females, we used to sleep n*ked and the suddenness of the attack caught us unprepared. They beamed the torch through the window and threatened to shoot if the door is not quickly opened,” she explained.
“I have never heard of this anywhere in Nigeria, even in the North, where insecurity is at the highest peak, that Corpers could be deliberately targetted, and robbed by criminals at gunpoint. Is it because we are not from Akwa Ibom that no one could hear our shouts and come to save us?”, another female colleague, lamented.
Mr. Nsikak Ibanga, a night guard at the State Secretariat of the Nigeria Union of Journalists which is located opposite the corpers lodge said, “I raised alarm by hitting the supporting pillars holding the reconstructed NUJ auditorium,” adding that “the sound reverberated across the whole area but no response”
A witness in the neighborhood, Bassey Offiong, said, “When I heard the attack and the outcry of the Corpers, I quickly reached out to the Police at Ikot Akpanabia Command, which is very close here, but they arrived a little late after the criminals had finished and left with their tricycle”.
Meanwhile, the Youth Leader of the area, Comrade Godwin Okpo, blamed incessant criminal activities around communities on the collapse of internal security organized by the local residents.
“I used to go round from house to house to collect monetary contributions for the vigilante group to secure the area at night, but suddenly they started accusing me of embezzling their money, so there was nothing I could do again.