Benue: Missing police officer found dead

A police officer was missing in Benue state on Saturday has been found dead, locals said yesterday.
The officer, whose identity has not yet been disclosed, was amongst the four mobile police officers that went missing following an ambush on their patrol vehicle in Logo local government area on Saturday.
The incident occurred in Tse Akpam village, near Azege town around 3pm Saturday afternoon while the officers were returning from a peace-building mission in remote villages, Police Commissioner, Fatai Owoseni, told Premium Times.
The remains of the officer, said to be a sergeant, were found in the bush yesterday and had been deposited at a morgue in Anyiin, another town in Logo LGA, locals said.
A chief in Logo LGA, Enoch Nyikyaa, said he saw the remains of the officer in Azege yesterday morning.
A politician and founder of Ashi Polytechnic in Anyiin, Terkura Suswam, said the officer’s body arrived at NKST Hospital in Anyiin yesterday.
Other residents of Anyiin and Azege also informed of the officer’s death in separate telephone interviews yesterday morning.
The police spokesperson in the state, Moses Yamu, is yet to respond to our requests for comments about the development yesterday morning.
The commissioner referred this reporter to the police spokesperson for comment on the matter.
The location of the officer brought to three the total number of personnel so far accounted for in the attack, which Owoseni told Premium Times was carried out by suspected herdsmen.
Premium Times broke the news of the attack on Saturday evening and reported on Sunday that two officers had been found unhurt.
Search and rescue efforts are underway for the last officer.
Suswam, whose polytechnic campus currently shelters hundreds of IDPs in the ongoing herdsmen crisis in the state, decried the failure of federal authorities to go into the hideouts of the killers.
“Clearly, these people are in the bushes around here from where they’re launching their gruesome attacks,” Suswam told this paper by telephone Monday morning.
“Now we wonder why it’s so difficult for the federal government to track them into bushes and bring this matter to an immediate end.”