19 Injured As Police & Traffic Officers Exchange Blows In Public | Photo

About 19 Traffic Marshals working for the Gombe State Government on Tuesday sustained various degrees of injuries in clashes with a group of policemen in the state.

Babaji Dunama, General Manager of the Gombe
State Agency for Social Services and Other Related Matters, made the disclosure. He said
that the clashes followed a disagreement
between the police and the marshals at the Cross
Roundabout in Gombe Town.

Mr. Dunama alleged that the marshals were
attacked by the police while performing their
duties and later eight vehicles filled with
policemen went to his office at the Ministry of
Youth and Poverty Alleviation and ransacked it
while every marshal they saw there was beaten
and 19 wounded marshals were arrested and
taken to the police station.

Mr. Dunama, however, said that after he
reported the matter to the Commissioner of
Police, Kudu Nma, the marshals were released
on bail.

The Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO) of the
Gombe State Police Command, Fwaje Atajiri,
said that two policemen from the Gombe Police
Division were sent to invite some persons
suspected of committing assault, when the
policemen tried to invite one of the suspects, he
refused and an argument ensued between the
suspect and the policemen and it was later
discovered that the suspect was a marshal but
that he was not in uniform.

Mr. Atajiri said that the clash could not have
occurred if the police had known that the
suspect was a marshal.
He however, denied allegations that policemen
in eight vehicles went and beat many marshals
in the Ministry of Youth and Poverty Alleviation.