Parents of secret service operatives who were killed alongside some 64 policemen in Alakyo in 2013 have vowed they will soon be on their way to enter the Eggon village to collect the bones of their deceased children, saying the government has failed them, three years on.
Dr. Nandul Durfa, leader of the network of parents and relatives of the slain operatives told Daily Trust on phone: “For three years, we have pleaded with government and the DSS (Department of State Service), to plead with the Eggon people to show them where the corpses of our sons killed in Alakyo were buried, so we can exhume the bones and give our loved ones decent burial, and finally close this case. But the government at the state and federal levels, as well as the DSS have continued to ignore us, putting us in more pains.”
“We want to, on our own, initiate a discussion to plead with the Eggon people, so they can assist us in recovering the bones of our loved one,” he added.
A security convoy of the DSS and the police was ambushed on its way to Alakyo, an Eggon village outside of Lafia, the Nasarawa State capital on May 7, 2013, and about 74 of the operatives killed in a fatal ambush, authorities had told a panel of investigation which sat over the matter two years ago.
The security agencies and the state government blamed Ombatse, an Eggon group whose chief priest, Baba Alakyo, they said they set out to arrest after they received complaints that his followers were storming churches and mosques to drag Eggon clergies for forceful initiation at an Alakyo shrine.
But Ombatse, whose legal adviser, Barrister Zamani Zakary Allumaga, testified during the panel hearing, denied all allegations, and claimed that Eggon gods killed the operatives because they (operatives) defied the land.
Three years, the parents of the deceased DSS operatives are vowing they will initiate talks with the Eggon tribes themselves, to go into Alakyo and recover the bones of their loved ones, since the state government they said “has shown no interest.”
The parents said inquiries show the corpses of the deceased were dumped in a manhole in the village, and are appealing for their recovery to inter for decent burial.
Seven families particularly are still asking for corpses of their sons to inter, following which the state government hired a team of pathologists two years ago, to conduct a DNA examination on some of the corpses still lying in the mortuary in a Lafia hospital.
But none of the corpses were found to match the specimens provided by the seven parents, forcing the government to declare it will carry out mass burial of the unclaimed corpses.
But the parents are insisting authorities will have to enter Alakyo and retrieve bodies from a certain manhole where some corpses were said to have been dumped.
Dr. Durfa, who is a former Chief Medical Director of University of Abuja Teaching Hospital, said the inability of authorities to recover and hand parents the remains of their sons has always reminded them of the incident at Alakyo.
“We want to inter the bodies of our children so that we can forget about the tragic incident that befell them at Alakyo. We are not blaming anybody for the tragedy. All we want is for us to see the bones of our children and give them decent burial so we can rest,” he said.
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