Revenue collectors chase school bus into a ditch at Nkpor

ONITSHA – There was a pandamonium yesterday at the popular Nkpor Junction in Idemili North local Government Area of Anambra state, near the commercial city of Onitsha as revenue contractors chased a school van into a ditch on the process of carrying out what they termed as ‘operation show your emblem receipt’ and smashed some items at a newspaper stand.

This incident is coming barely two days after the police in the state arrested two revenue agents of the state for allegedly killing one Okechukwu Onwuamaegbum, a driver attached to The Lord’s Chosen Charismatic Revival Mission during the process of demanding for the driver’s same vehicle emblem.

The driver of the school bus, a Mitsubishi L300 with Inscription: “Diocese on the Niger Ascension Nursery & Primary School, Isiafor”, according to the source, was driving past the Junction yesterday morning when the revenue contractors started chasing him with motorbike.

Eye-witnesses said that as the three-man task force emblem revenue collectors chased the driver, the driver, sensing danger and suspecting that they were armed robbers, swerved into a side drainage and one of the vehicle’s front tyres crossed over the drainage and punctured.

A newspaper vendor who simply identified herself as Mrs. Ikpe, whose newspaper stand was partially smashed by the vehicle, told newsmen shortly after the incident that if the front tyre had not punctured and forced the vehicle to an abrupt stop, the vehicle would have climbed the drainage with the high speed and would have pulled down her newsstand completely and possibly kill some newspaper readers at the moment.

She disclosed that when the revenue contractors discovered that the bus had fallen into the drainage and destroyed few things on sale at her newsstand, they quickly jumped into their motorbike and wanted to zoom off but due to a traffic jam that held them back, passersby grabbed them and were about to lynch them when personnel of Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps, NSCDC who positioned their ‘Operation Kpochapu’ patrol van within the Junction to checkmate the activities of hoodlums in the area, intervened and rescued them.

She further disclosed that after rescuing them, the NSCDC officials took them and the driver to Ogidi Police Station and handed them over to the police for interrogations.

Chief Christian Ikpe, owner of the newsstand and husband to Mrs. Ikpe, told newsmen on phone that at the police station, the main government contractor who employed the revenue taskforce men that caused the pandamonium, begged for forgiveness and pledged to enlighten his boys on the appropriate civil manner of going about their emblem revenue drive.