Passengers Injured After Pirates Hijacked Speedboat In Bayelsa (Photos)

There was palpable tension at Azuzuama Kingdom this morning when news broke that a passengers speedboat had been hijacked along the Keme-Ebiama and Ogboinbiri waterways in Bayelsa state. Immediately, the information was spread around and a search team of Azuzuama origin was organized to look for the hijacked boat.

Finally, help came the way of the victims as they were found and rescued.

The passengers narrated what happened to them at a government owned hospital where they are currently receiving medical treatment;

Below is what they narrated to Isedirikonghen Ebi AlhaJi;

“We left home around 7am and on getting to a T-junction, leading to Gbaraun Community, we appeared to a waiting speedboat with mast men. Immediately we drove them bye, they started chasing us.

Since the area is not too far from the Ogboinbiri flow station where there is security presence, our driver refused to slowdown for them. In that instance, they started shooting at us in a closed to 10munites chase.

When it was obvious that we can’t escape them, some of us removed the lifejackets they were on and jumped into the river and swim for safety.

At that time, the three of us had received gunshots at different parts of our body so we couldn’t remove our lifejackets so we jumped off the boat with it. When we landed on the water, we couldn’t swim faster with the jackets nor dive deep into the water to escape them.

At that point, they captured our boat and surrendered us with the guns, pulled us out on the water into the boat, searched our pockets and dispossessed us of everything and started cutting us with machetes allover our bodies”.

Egbe-emi Isaac, a civil servant and pastor of Power of Resurrection Ministry, Azuzuama, who had about four deep cuts on his skull and gunshot injuries at his back said he was traveling to Uniport, Port Harcourt, for academic clearance and was with all his documents. All he asked for was his bag containing his documents which angered the gunmen to inflict these grave injuries on him.

According to the driver, all onboard the boat were 8passengers and loads of crayfish, meat (including my alligator), fish and cash over one million naira.