Unidentified terrorists in southern Nigeria’s Anambra state beheaded a local legislator in recent days after kidnapping him and another person as they traveled by car along a road in the state’s Aguata area, Nigeria’s the Guardian newspaper reported Monday.
Okechukwu Okoye, who represented the Aguata II Constituency in Anambra’s State House of Assembly, went missing on May 15 along with his aide, Cyril Chiegboka. Anambra police later discovered a vehicle driven by the duo abandoned on the side of a local road and dispatched forces to search for the apparently abducted men. During the course of this manhunt, on May 21, police discovered Okoye’s severed head at Chisco Park in Anambra state’s Nnewi south local government area.
“The lawmaker was killed. His head was found along Nnobi road. There is no suspect in custody yet,” Anambra state police spokesman Tochukwu Ikenga told reporters on May 21 of Okoye.
Nigeria’s the Niche online newspaper said it had reviewed video footage circulating online over the weekend that appeared to show Okoye’s “freshly beheaded head … seen placed in a carton by the roadside with a handwritten note placed by the side.”
The Niche claimed on May 21 that there were unverified “indications” that Chiegboka “may have also been killed” by his and Okoye’s unidentified kidnappers.
Anambra State Gov. Chukwuma Solud posted a $24,000 reward on May 21 for information that leads to the arrest of Okoye’s killer(s).
Gov. Solud’s spokesman released a statement on his behalf on Saturday that said Solud “suspected that Okoye’s kidnappers were ‘probably [members of] the same criminal gang that attacked him [Solud] and killed three policemen at Isuofia two years ago that are once again on the prowl.'”
Isufoia is located about four miles northwest of Aguata in Anambra state. Unidentified gunmen killed and beheaded two Nigerian Army soldiers in Imo state, which neighbors Anambra state, on April 30.
“The victims, A. M. Linus, said to be a Sergeant of the Nigerian Army, and his unidentified wife, said to be a lance corporal in the Army, were reportedly beheaded after being shot dead by the gunmen,” Nigeria’s Premium Times reported on May 2.
“Their corpses were said to have been dismembered by the gunmen. A gory image of their heads has gone viral on various social media platforms,” according to the newspaper.
The military couple was traveling to perform their “traditional marriage formalities” when they were abducted and barbarically killed, Nigerian Army spokesman Onyema Nwachukwu told the Premium Times on May 2.
The newspaper observed at the time that southeastern Nigeria had recently witnessed an increase in attacks by unidentified “gunmen” targeting government and security facilities.
“The Nigerian government has accused the outlawed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) of being responsible for the deadly attacks in the South-east. But the group has repeatedly denied their involvement in the attacks,” the Premium Times observed.
Nigeria’s federal government designated the IPOB a terrorist organization in 2017. The separatist group demands independence for “Biafra,” which is its name for a region of southeastern Nigeria. A civil war between Biafra secessionists and Abuja from 1967 to 1970 killed one million people.
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