*CP Eboka-led team’s swift response commended
By BASHIR ADEFAKA
No fewer than 31 persons lost their lives and several others injured while scrambling for free food and gifts in a new generation church in Port Harcourt, Rivers State capital, due to stampede, The DEFENDER can authoritatively report.
Our source had said the church was said to have invited members of the public for its fourth edition of free gifts and food items distribution and that some of the invitees had arrived since Friday while others came as early as 6.30am on Saturday for an event scheduled for 9am.
According to the source, which was not specific about the number of deaths, crowd of persons stormed the church’s gate and pushed it causing the scrambling that led to the stampede.
But when contacted on the telephone by The DEFENDER, the Rivers State Police Public Relations Officer, DSP Grace Woyengikure Iringe-Koko, confirmed the sad event actually took place and gave a definite number of casualties as 31 deaths.
DSP Iringe-Koko informed this online newspaper that a team of the Rivers State Police Command led by the Commissioner of Police, CP Friday Eboka, was on ground. She, however, could not give details of what, why and how the incident happened as she said the Command had commenced investigations.
In the meantime, some of the feedback we got on the response of the state police command has been commendable.
We were told by a respondent, who according to our source, would not want to be mentioned, that the timely response of the Commissioner of Police, CP Friday Eboka, who went all out with a good number of his Command officers, played role in some of the rescue as, he said, “there could have been more deaths but police knew how people were taken to the various hospitals for immediate medical attention”.
