Gunmen Kill Governor Ortom’s Security Aide

Gunmen on Friday in Makurdi killed Denen Igbana, the Senior Special Assistant on Security to Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Igbana was killed in the early hours of Friday at his Tionsha residence.

Speaking during a sympathy visit to the family of the deceased, Ortom vowed that Igbana’s killers would never go unpunished.

He ordered investigation into the killing, assuring that anybody implicated in the killing would not be spared.

Ortom described the deceased as one of his most trusted and dependable appointees.

He disclosed that the deceased had intimated him that some people were threatening to kidnap him and that Igbana requested for funds to carry out perimeter fencing of his house.

Ortom said that Igbana was instrumental to the sustenance of the amnesty programme in the state that led to the surrender of arms by criminal gangs.

The governor assured that the government would carry out discrete investigation on the killing to unravel the motif and people behind the act.

Also speaking, the Commissioner of Police in the state, Paul Yakadi, said the police were already “nosing around to fish out possible suspects”.

The leader of Tionsha Community, Thomas Ayakpam, said the community was awakened at about 2:30 AM by gunshots.

He said that after the gunshots died down, he heard the deceased pleading with his assailants to spare his life.

“I heard him say, ‘So, Ghana, after all that we have done together, you can look me in the face and kill me in this manner’,” Ayakpam said.

Some sympathisers confirmed that they also heard gunshots and the altercation between Igbana and his killers.