WIDOW CRIES FOR JUSTICE

I WANT my husband’s killers to be apprehended and punished because he didn’t deserve to be gruesomely murdered like that”. With tears flowing freely from her eyes, the widow of the cocoa farmer that was murdered by yet to be identified gunmen in Ilawe-Ekiti, Mrs. Funke Eniafe, has appealed to the state government and the police to unravel the circumstances surrounding the murder of her husband, Ropo, in his farm at the weekend. The cocoa farmer was reportedly killed by suspected gunmen. While some people think he was allegedly killed by the Fulani herdsmen, his brother thinks otherwise. . Mr. Eniafe, 51, was said to have gone to his farm last Friday with the promise to his family that he would not stay long. But when his wife did not see him till evening she raised an alarm and the community quickly set up a search team who later found him dead in the pool of his blood in his farm. While many in the community suspected that he might have been killed by the Fulani herdsmen, his younger brother, Boluwaji Eniafe, who spoke to The Guardian yesterday, lamented that his brother, who left behind four kids and a wife, might have been killed by some armed robbers, who had been terrorising the community in the last few weeks. According to him, “he must have run into the armed robbers, who were escaping after robbing. They must have killed him based on assumption that he must have seen them.” He said that his brother never had any dispute with anybody before the ugly incident, adding that no part of his body was missing when they discovered his corpse. He alleged that some Fulani herdsmen had in recent times been unleashing havoc on the community, dispossessing them of their money and belongings and would later escape to the bush. He appealed to the government to find his brother’s killers and also put a permanent stop to the menace of robbery. Meanwhile, there was a tension in the community as many stayed in-doors because of reprisal attacks from the youths that were accusing the Fulanis of the murder. When The Guardian visited the community on Monday, primary and secondary schools hurriedly closed and asked their students to go home while businesses and commercial activities were grounded as shops were closed. GUARDIAN