A  Nigerian, suspected to be mentally-deranged, Bethel Chima, has been shot on the legs after running amok with a cutlass inside a police station in Port-Bouet Abidjan, Ivory Coast.

Chima, who is in his 30s, was said to have been living in Abidjan for the past eight years. Nigerians residing in Port-Bouet said Chima started behaving abnormally about three years ago.

A police source said that Chima stormed the police station on September 11 with a cutlass and chased policemen away from their duty posts.

The source further disclosed that the Nigerian dispossessed one of the policemen on duty of his riffle and began firing sporadically.

The source said that it took the swift intervention of an anti-robbery team to bring the situation under control.

At Central University Hospital, CHU, Cocody, Abidjan, where he is currently receiving treatment, Chima said that the police was aware of his reason for attacking the station.

Chima, a Nigerian from Imo State, who sounded quite incoherently, accused the Ivorian police of using his name to play politics and making so much money in return.

He said: “Two years ago, they burnt my house and everything I have acquired. They know why I came to attack the station. You can ask them, they know.”

The Consular Officer of the Nigerian Embassy in Côte d’Ivoire, Mr. Obinna Ogbonna, who has visited Chima, said the mission would follow the matter according to the law.