Pandemonium In Bonny As Cultists Attack Employment Bureau Boss

There was pandemonium around the township area of Bonny, headquarters of Bonny Local Government Area of Rivers State as cultists who attacked the Chairman of the Bonny Integrated Recruitment Centre (BIRC), Aladiokuma Hart engaged the police and military in a fiasco.

The hoodlums said to belong to one of the cult groups operating in the area were said to have trailed Hart to the Perekule Palace where he was attending a meeting with the Bonny Council of Chiefs and other stakeholders in the community.

Eyewitnesses told Kristina Reports that upon learning that he was at the palace, the cultists mobilised close to 200 of their boys to the area and demanded to see him. Upon sighting him they descended on him and manhandling him. It took the intervention of the palace guards who dragged him into the palace premises to save him from their wrath.

But for the intervention of the police, who whisked him away into the inner recesses of the palace and later out of the area, the BIRC boss would have been killed.

An eyewitness told Kristina Reports that one of the cultists was hit by a stray bullet, which infuriated his colleagues and sparked the spree of sporadic shooting that sent panicked residents scampering into different directions for safety.

According to eyewitnesses, following the ensuing pandemonium, fierce-looking soldiers drawn from the joint military taskforce stationed in Bonny were drafted in to calm the situation as the culktists had chased away the policemen who had responded earlier.

The soldiers consequently cordoned off the whole township area stretching from the Hausa quarters to Perekule Palace, residence of the Amanyanabo of Bonny Kingdom.

A reliable source disclosed to Kristina Reports that the cultists were angry with the employment bureau chief over his alleged collusion with officials of PIVOT GIS to bring in strangers to occupy the over 3,000 slots in the recent recruitment exercise by the company two weeks ago at the detriment of the indigenes.

PIVOT GIS is in charge of the shutdown operations for the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) plant in Bonny.

According to the source, all hotels in the community were fully booked as the newly recruited employees had to be accommodated pending when they would be able to fend for themselves. The source further revealed that 400 more persons were to be hired by the company in a few days.

The source said the said meeting was for the purpose of securing clearance for the company to finalize the recruitment process before the incident happened. Kristina Reports could not confirm this with the palace secretary, Chief Abel Attoni as at the time of this report.  

Efforts to reach the BIRC Chairman proved abortive as at the time of this report.