Normalcy returns to troubled Taraba council – Police

The Taraba State Police Command has said calm has returned to the Takum Local Government Area after the clash between two ethnic groups that led to killings on Sunday.

The clashes were said to have been necessitated by the gruesome killings of some cow vendors by one of the ethnic groups.

The casualties figures, which some residents said was above ten, was, however, denied by the police who claimed that “as at yesterday, only four casualties were recorded.”

Making the confirmation, on Monday, the command Public Relations Officer, PPRO, Abdullahi Usman, said normalcy has returned to the council.

This, according to him, was made possible following the massive deployment of security operatives to the troubled local government councils.

Apart from the heavily armed anti-riot policemen said to have been deployed to the area, soldiers from the 93 Battalion, the police said, have as well been drafted to the crisis areas.

The spokesperson of the command, who gave the casualties figures as four, said the crisis would have taken a different dimension but for the swift intervention of the security forces.

The genesis of the crisis was observed to have been linked to the attack on a van conveying cattle to the nearby market which led to the killings of the occupants.

A reprisal attack by the rival ethnic group sparked the clash in Takum, the administrative headquarters of the council where houses were not only destroyed, but lives of innocent souls terminated.

The crisis came barely two weeks after the council Caretaker chairman, Boyi Manja, regained his freedom from kidnappers who whisked him away along Takum/Wukari road.