There was pandemonium at Tetlow road in Owerri, the Imo State capital, when members of National youth service corps clashed with suspected Northern fraudsters, believed to be money swindlers.
The corps members who reportedly returned from Abia state where they participated in the 2016, batch B, stream 11 orientation program clashed with the alleged fraudsters for allegedly using mystical means to swindle them of their 40,000 (forty thousand Naira) which included their first monthly allowance which was paid them on camp.
The corps members numbering about eight told our correspondent at the scene of the crime that the two Northerners operating with two monkeys, unknowingly to them pretentiously rammed into them with their monkeys, that was how the forty thousand Naira they were returning with got disappeared.
According to the enraged fresh graduates, when the two accused persons who were looking very unkept rammed into them, they quickly apologized to them, but minutes later they realized that the money that was in the pocket of one of them was missing.
Curious to recover their missing money, they confronted the suspects, but they denied knowledge of the crime.
They raised the alarm which attracted the attention of passersby who queried the suspects and threatened to administer jungle justice on them before they finally owned up to the crime.
But the situation became intense when the suspects could only bring 28,000 (twenty eight thousand Naira) out of the acclaimed missing 40, 000.
The corps members insisted that the suspects must complete the amount, holding them, while the people threatened to beat up the accused persons.
The suspects who were begging the corps members together with the mob not to attack them, resulted to self defense by using their two monkeys to prevent the crowd from attacking them.
The situation degenerated into a rowdy one, as the road which is a commercial nerve center was temporarily locked down, with traders and shop owners forced to close shops over fear of their goods being destroyed in the ensuing crisis.
Some people around said that the suspects were known for using the monkeys in a pretentious manner to swindle people of their money on the Bank road.
When contacted, the police Public Relations Officer in the state, Andrew Enwerem, said that the matter had yet to be reported to him.
