BEVERLY HILLS, July 19, (THEWILL) – Two new generation banks at Apapa area of Lagos were set on fire on Wednesday when dozens of tanker drivers went on rampage over the death of one of their colleagues.
The aggrieved tanker drivers had targeted the banks over the death of one of them, said to have been caused by a mobile policeman attached to Diamond Bank on Burma Road.
Reports say the irate mob also set a Sterling Bank branch on Wharf Road ablaze, in the process destroying properties and other valuables.
It was gathered that the trailer drivers had indiscriminately parked in front of the bank as they usually do.
The policemen who were attached to the bank at first approached them to make way for customers to come in and carry out their financial transactions.
When attempts to move them proved abortive, one of the policemen attached to the bank had shot sporadically into the air to scare the drivers off.
But an expended pellet hit one of the tanker drivers, who bled and died on the spot before help could come.
Angered by the development, the tanker drivers had regrouped and after setting the bank ablaze, went berserk and set the second bank ablaze.
They even prevented the attempts by men of the Lagos State Fire Service, Iponri, who rushed to the scene, to put out the raging fire. For fear of being brutalised by the tanker drivers and their fire trucks vandalised, firemen left the scene.
Meanwhile, policemen from Rapid Response Squad, anti-riot squad and Area B command, as well as operatives from the Nigerian Navy Ship BEECEOFT have been deployed to the scene of the incident to prevent further breakdown of law and order.
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