Traffic officials kill student in Rivers over N30,000 bribe

THE Rivers State chapter of the Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO), a human rights and pro-democracy group in southern Nigeria, has raised the alarm over an alleged extra-judicial murder of a university student in Port Harcourt, the state capital, by some public traffic officials. The group made this known to AkanimoReports on Wednesday, even as it commended the police in the state for arresting and charging four officials of the state Road Traffic Management Agency (TIMARIV) over the alleged murder of Tasie Nyenke, an engineering student of the state University of Science and Technology in Port Harcourt. Chairman of the group, Steve Obodoekwe, also alleged that some top government functionaries made “desperate moves’’ to secure the release of the traffic officials without prosecution. Six TIMARIV officials, according to the CLO, last May 19, at the Rukpokwu axis of the capital city, violently attacked Tasie, 34, beating him to a pulp before bolting away with his car. “The late Tasie was driving his car, a Passat car with registration number Edo AG 573 AGD when the car developed a fault which forced him to stop to find out what was wrong. “As he opened the car bonnet to check what was wrong, the six TIMARIV officials, operating in a bus arrived and immediately pounced on him, pressed his head on the engine and started forcing the bonnet to close. They demanded the sum of N30,000, bribe from him. They accused him of wrong parking. When he tried to explain, they started beating him angrily. “After the attack, the young man literally crawled home and went to bed. He never woke up again. His lifeless body was recovered from his room at Rukpokwu in the morning of June 21, when the family members, in conjunction with the police broke into his house. He was taken to the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital, where autopsy was done.’’ The accused were arraigned on Monday, June 25, before a Port Harcourt Senior Magistrate Court, on a two-count charge of murder and conspiracy to commit murder. The trial magistrate ordered that they be remanded in prison custody.