By Julius Bokoru
Officers of the Nigerian Navy and the Mobile Police clashed at Edepie, Yenagoa, Bayelsa.
Trouble started when a plain clothes policeman, apparently off-duty, refused to take his car off the road when a naval convoy was approaching.
Piqued by the man’s bravado, the Naval officers descended on the law enforcement agent and reduced him to a pulp, unmoved by the fact he had proved himself to be a police officer.
Getting wind of the development, the police deployed over three dozen men from its special units: Anti-Vice and Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) to engage the military men in a bid to retrieve their colleague.
The naval officers, outnumbered by the mobile-police, found themselves rounded-up and sieged. Two Naval troopers from the Agudama Naval Command were called in to rescue the held-down naval officers but the police had already called in too many reinforcements.
They demanded that the Navy satisfy the hospital bills of the battered policeman, pay him a damages of an undisclosed sum and offer the specific naval men responsible for prosecution.
Fever-pitch was reached when the policemen fired canisters of tear gas, placed barricades on the naval convoy. A few ‘warning’ gunshots were fired by both parties on the air. There were no casualties nor serious injuries apart from the brutalized policeman and a naval officer with a broken nose.
The state Police Commissioner and the head of the state Naval hierarchy moved in to ensure peace
