Reported by: Ijeoma G | Edited by: Oravbiere Osayomore Promise.
The video is short, shaky, and deeply troubling. In it, a man in a police uniform is seen raising his rifle and firing into the air while a group of men in high-visibility vests surround him, pulling at his clothes and shouting. The scene unfolds in broad daylight at a busy junction in Benin City, the Edo State capital. Motorists and traders scatter. Somewhere in the chaos, a traffic official has already been injured. The man who fired the shot is an operative of the Intelligence Response Team. The men in the vests are personnel of the Edo State Traffic Management Agency. Both are supposed to be on the same side. Both are supposed to be protecting the public. Instead, they were fighting each other in the street, and one of them decided to discharge a firearm.
The incident occurred on Tuesday, September 8, 2026, at about 3:00 p.m. at Third Junction, by Sokponba Road. According to eyewitnesses, what began as an argument escalated into a physical confrontation before a weapon was drawn and fired. At least one EDSTMA official was injured. The immediate cause of the dispute has not been independently established. But the consequences were immediate and alarming. Motorists abandoned their vehicles and ran. Pedestrians fled in different directions. Traders abandoned their goods. For several minutes, one of the busiest junctions in Benin City became a scene of panic, with the public caught in the middle of a fight between two agencies that are supposed to be working together.
The footage of the incident surfaced on social media on Thursday, September 10, 2026, and spread quickly. By midday, the Edo State Police Command had issued a statement. The Commissioner of Police, Patrick Daaor, said he had personally interviewed representatives of both parties and ordered a discreet investigation to establish the circumstances surrounding the incident. He also directed that the conduct of the officer seen firing the rifle be subjected to an appropriate disciplinary review. The command said it does not, and will not, condone any act of indiscipline, unprofessional conduct, or abuse of police powers by any of its personnel. It added that any officer, irrespective of the agency, found culpable after due investigation would be appropriately sanctioned in line with extant laws and regulations.
The statement also stressed the importance of inter-agency collaboration and mutual respect, noting that effective public safety depended on agencies working together professionally towards a common objective. It described the incident as serious and said it was being treated with the seriousness it deserved, without prejudice to the established working relationship between the Edo State Police Command and EDSTMA. The command urged members of the public to refrain from taking the law into their own hands and to report any police misconduct through its Complaint Response Unit.
But the statement, while necessary, does not answer the questions that matter most. What exactly were IRT operatives doing at Third Junction in the first place? Why did a dispute between two agencies escalate to the point of physical confrontation? Who threw the first punch? Who pulled the first weapon? Was the officer who fired into the air authorised to discharge his weapon in a crowded street, and if so, under what circumstances? Was anyone hit by the bullet? The police have promised a discreet investigation, but discreet is not the same as transparent. The public deserves to know what happened and why, not just that someone is looking into it.
The reaction from residents has been a mixture of anger and exhaustion. One witness, who identified himself as Ezekiel Obi, said the situation was frightening because of the large number of people around the junction when the incident occurred. Another resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the increasingly aggressive approach adopted by some personnel of specialised police units had become a recurring problem in the city. He described it as a commando-style approach that exposed innocent people to unnecessary danger. These are not new complaints. They are the same complaints that have been made about police conduct in Edo State for years. The difference this time is that the confrontation was captured on video, and the evidence is impossible to ignore.
The clash has also raised uncomfortable questions about the nature of inter-agency relations in Nigeria's security architecture. The IRT is a specialised unit of the Nigeria Police Force, created to tackle violent crime, kidnapping, and armed robbery. EDSTMA is a state agency responsible for traffic management and enforcement. Their mandates are distinct. Their jurisdictions are different. In theory, they should complement each other. In practice, as the events of Tuesday afternoon demonstrated, they can collide with dangerous consequences. The rivalry between police units and state traffic agencies is not unique to Edo State. It is a recurring feature of Nigeria's fragmented security landscape, where overlapping mandates, unclear boundaries, and competing egos create friction that sometimes erupts into violence. When that violence involves firearms and happens in public, the consequences are catastrophic.
The Commissioner of Police has promised that anyone found culpable will be sanctioned. That is the right thing to say. But sanctions must follow. The officer who fired his rifle in a crowded street must face a disciplinary process that is thorough, impartial, and transparent. The circumstances that led to the confrontation must be investigated without fear or favour. And the findings must be made public. The public cannot be expected to trust a system that investigates itself behind closed doors and announces only the conclusion, not the evidence.
The people of Benin City deserve better. They deserve to walk the streets without fear that a fight between two uniformed agencies will turn into a shootout. They deserve to know that when they report police misconduct, their complaints will be taken seriously. They deserve a police force and a traffic agency that work together to protect them, not fight each other in front of them. The video that surfaced on Thursday is a stain on both institutions. The investigation that follows must be a genuine attempt to clean it, not a cosmetic exercise designed to calm the public until the next incident occurs. The CP has ordered a probe. The city is waiting for the results.
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