abubakar-IGPThe Ebonyi State Police Command has arrested a 38-year-old man, Ogbonnaya Ani for allegedly killing a Fulani herdsman identified as Idris Kpoyi.
The suspect was said to have shot the 55-year-old herdsman who he accused of grazing his herd of cattle on his (Ani’s) rice farm at Isu Village in Onicha Abakaliki, Ebonyi State. Ani, Sunday Sun, gathered, later dug a shallow grave and buried his victim after committing the crime.
The Ebonyi State Commissioner of Police, Maigari Dikko said trouble started when the victim reportedly led his herd of cattle into Ani’s farm and ignored pleas by the farm owner to make his animals leave the farm. Ani, consequently resorted to violence, which claimed the life of herdsman.
Dikko said that the suspect, after killing the herdsman, invited two of his friends, Okafor Anoke and Sunday Onyemachi, who assisted him in digging and burying the corpse in a shallow grave in the forest. The two accomplices are said to be currently at large “The case was reported at Onicha Division Police Headquarters when the family of the deceased saw traces of blood, which they traced to the shallow grave”, Dikko said.
The Police Commissioner said that the policemen in Onicha quickly swung into action and went to the forest where they exhumed the corpse after a week. “His body was recovered by the police and it has been deposited in the mortuary,” he disclosed
One of the relations of the deceased, Muhammed Anani said that they heard a gun shot about 40 minutes after the late Kpoyi and his brothers had taken their respective herds of cattle for grazing in Isu bush on the fateful day. “Immediately we heard the gun shot we called Idris Kpoyi’s phone, he didn’t pick it. So we decided to trace him into the forest, where we eventually saw a corpse buried in a shallow grave. We then informed the Police at Onicha, who came to the scene and exhumed the corpse and we found out that it was my brother, “he stated.
The suspect who hails from Isu, Onicha Abakaliki, Ebonyi State said that he had repeatedly warned the deceased to desist from grazing his herd of cattle on his farm. “I have warned him severally, yet he kept bringing his cattle to graze on my farm.
So when I couldn’t bear it any more and I saw him on the way to my farm, I chased him with cutlass but he ran away so I brought out my single barrel gun and shot at him and he died instantly” he said, adding that, “I later called two of my friends, Okafor Anoke and Onyemachi Sunday and they assisted me to dig a shallow grave in which we buried him.
“The family of the deceased later came with policemen to arrest me after they had exhumed the corpse from the forest where I buried him,” he said.
Ani added that the Police discovered one locally made single barrel gun and a machete when they visited his house for investigation, Dikko said the suspect would soon be charged to court while the two others who are now at large are still being trailed.
 http://sunnewsonline.com/new/?p=57229