By Boluwaji Obahopo

LOKOJA — An overzealous police officer from ‘C’ Division in Kogi State Police Command, yesterday, shot dead a scavenger in Lokoja over the deceased’s refusal to give him N200 weekend tip.

The development caused a heavy traffic on the ever-busy Ganaja road as friends and colleagues of the scavenger took to the street burning tyres and disturbing vehicular movement.

An eye witness said the Policemen who were on routine visit to the site at 200 housing units, where the scavengers usually gather their wares for onward sale to interested buyers, shot him twice in the head after his refusal to part with the usual weekly stipends which resulted in a heated altercation.

One of the dead scavenger’s colleagues said: “The Police visit us (scavengers site) and demanded to know the identity of the owner of a caravan (pointing to the caravan) and when we told them that the person who brought it said he could only come out tomorrow because he also bought it from an Igbo man, the police asked him (the deceased) to part with some money.

“He declined because he was not the owner of the caravan, and in the process, they begin to attack the deceased, dragging him on the floor and eventually one of them shot him on the head and he died immediately.”

The death led to blockage of the ever-busy Ganaja road, with the scavengers numbering over 40 burning tyres and disrupting traffic.

It, however, took the intervention of men of the SARs to disperse the protesting youths who demanded justice over the death of their colleague.

The aggrieved colleagues, along with some youths in the area, also burnt and pull down some billboards of candidates of the PDP, mounted after the Dunamis bridge.