Hoodlums set ablaze Azikwe statue in Anambra state

The rampaging hoodlums suspected to have hijacked the protest on police brutality in Onitsha, Anambra State, have destroyed the statue of Nigeria’s first President, Nnamdi Azikiwe, erected in the city.

Penpushing reports that the statue erected few months ago by Governor Willie Obiano to further beautify the city is located at Denis Memorial Grammar School roundabout in Onitsha,was vandalized by the hoodlums with various dangerous weapons

The hoodlums, armed with dangerous weapons including machetes, were heard saying venting their anger against the late Nigerian leader, but in response to the damage, Victor Ononye, who is the deceased kinsman described the incident as “heresy and sacrilegious’’.

Penpushing further reports that, the kinsman, said the late Azikwe must be expressing regrets in his tomb over the action of the hoodlums, stressing, “what happened at the DMGS Roundabout, Onitsha, which I saw with my own eyes, evoked tears’.

“They decapitated the hand and went away with his title staff. That is the height of ingratitude by ignorant people who know nothing about history’, Ononye said adding that the hoodlums destroyed all the ornaments used in beautifying the site of the statue.

“They were few in number. Why the police, a stone throw away to the roundabout, could not intervene, was a mystery. All the iron bars erected round the site were removed. All the decorative lights and materials around the site were vandalised’.

“I saw two vigilante men brandishing rifles and riding on a motorcycle. They stopped and the boys hailed them and they rode off. It is a pity! Zik of Africa; the sage, who facilitated the end of the Nigeria civil war; Zik who built Nigeria’s foremost University for excellence in the education, doesn’t deserve this,’’ he lamented.