Hoodlums Attack Mosque in Onitsha

No fewer than 10 persons  have reportedly sustained serious injuries when hoodlums suspected to be members of the Ndi Mpiawazu allegedly attacked a mosque in the commercial city of Onitsha. The mosque was later demolished with a bulldozer.
It was gathered that the victims were allegedly attacked in the early hours of yesterday while they were still sleeping in the mosque along the Onitsha Head Bridge. Those wounded, it was learnt, are now receiving treatment in an undisclosed hospital in Asaba, Delta State.

But hundreds of Muslim worshipers protested the alleged attack on some of their members and the demolition of their mosque along the road at the bridge.

Addressing journalists in Onitsha yesterday, leader of the Hausa and Yoruba community in the area, Alhaji Habib Faruk, said the hoodlums numbering over 50 stormed the mosque at about 4 am armed with dangerous weapons and attacked their members.

“We got information this morning that a group of boys suspected to be Mpiawazu attacked some of our members who slept in the mosque and ordered them to leave the place of worship; some of them who tried to put up resistance were attacked with axes and machetes while their mobile phones were collected,” he said.

Faruk said a few hours later their mosque was demolished with a bulldozer in the guise that the federal government had taken over the land at the Head Bridge.

“The governor had told us that he will provide us with an alternative place for us to build another mosque and transact our businesses but till date, we have not seen the governor or his representative; so we view this as a ploy to sack us from Onitsha.

“This little space is the only place where you can see Hausa people doing business in the whole Onitsha and indeed Anambra State; we don’t have shops in the main market but in Kano and other big markets in the North, the Igbos have more shops than even the Hausas but now; the state government does not want us to be here again even when officials from the Federal Ministry of Works told us they have measured what they wanted as regards the road construction,” he said.

The leader also accused the state government of trying to eject them from the state through dubious means, saying “if the governor does not want us here in his state, he should be gracious enough to give us a written note that he doesn’t want us again in his state and we shall park our belongings and go back to our states.”

His members, according to him, paid their tenement fees to the federal ministry of works up to 2015, saying if government wants to relocate them, adequate alternative arrangement should have been concluded before the demolition of their mosque.

“We are calling on the President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan and Minister of Works to look into our plight and help us because we don’t have any place to park and load our trucks and other businesses. They should come to our rescue,” he said.