Unknown gunmen, on Monday night, stormed the residence of Registrar of the National Examination Council (NECO), Professor Godswill Obioma, and strangled him.
In what was suspected to be an assassination, wife of the deceased, Elizabeth Obioma, was quoted, on Tuesday morning, to have said:
The assassins came in and killed him and left without taking anything.
Reported to have wept profusely over the development, Mrs Obioma said that her husband had just returned to Minna from a trip to Abuja when the armed men, lurking in his compound, descended on him and strangled him.
It was learnt that a police spokesman did not immediately return a request seeking comments about the development.
Meanwhile, the late Obioma had been facing attempts to remove him from office as the head of NECO, a prominent examination body run by the Nigerian government.
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The 67-year-old was appointed head of NECO barely a year ago on May 14, 2020. He hailed from Abia in Nigeria’s Igbo-dominated South-East region.
The death of Obioma came barely a day after Ahmed Gulak, a top politician of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), was gunned down in Owerri, raising widespread fears of insecurity.
Similarly, a former Justice of the Enugu High Court, Stanley Nnaji, was murdered by unknown gunmen in a series of assassinations that is adding to the list of issues beleaguering the country.
In the meantime, a section of southern Nigerians, while condemning the attack and killing of Obioma, tagged the development as a retaliatory move by the north following the brutal murder of the APC chieftain, Gulak.
While people from both regions sounded war drums, other appealed for calm and urged security agencies to fish out the killers of Obioma and ensure that justice prevails.