The Nigerian Army says it is working with other security agencies to find an armed gang that attacked a military Hilux vehicle in Benin City, the capital of Edo State, on Wednesday.
Yemi Sokoya, Assistant Director of Army Public Relations, revealed this in a statement and also provided specifics about the incident.
“The attention of the Nigerian Army (NA) has been drawn to a series of inaccurate narratives in the media space in respect to the attack on a military Hilux vehicle at Akpakpava road in Benin City Edo State by some armed gunmen on Wednesday 23 August 2023,” the statement read.
According to him, contrary to speculations, a clerk from the 4 Brigade finance office and a driver went to town to fix the office printer and also stopped at a bank to process and collect a bank statement.
Furthermore, it said the armed gang in a red Toyota Camry car who must have trailed and noticed that the soldiers were not armed, opened fire on the vehicle, at a traffic light junction probably thinking the soldiers were carrying the money; but when they discovered the vehicle was empty, they zoomed off. Unfortunately, some of the bullets hit the driver in the chest and he lost his life in the hospital.
While several reports claimed that the robbers carted away huge sums of cash, the Army described them as “entirely false as no cash was involved”.