THE publicity secretary, Ekiti State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Jackson Adebayo, suffered an attack by unknown assailants on Friday night on his way to church, just as he claimed that the assailants were sent after him by the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the state.
Adebayo said on Saturday that he suspected the attack to be politically motivated.
According to him, he received threats from some unknown people recently.
Adebayo said: “I was going to vigil in the church when three armed men on a motorbike accosted me. Two of them came down with their guns and started shooting sporadically. They seized me and hit my head against the asphalted road and the man on the bike ordered them to shoot me, but the men said they should leave me.
“I wouldn’t describe it as a robbery because apart from my phone and tablet that they took, the money they found on me was returned. Few days ago, I had issued a press release on the purported trip of Mrs Aisha Buhari to America on behalf of our party and I started receiving threat calls on my phones afterwards.
“The callers were threatening me to leave the woman alone and few days after, this happened. We are in a democracy and we have the right to speak as a party. If anybody thinks that by engaging in violence, they can silence us and our party, they are mistaken. We are for the people and the voice of the people is the voice of God.”
Adebayo, who was treated at a private hospital in Ado Ekiti, said his assailants hit his head with their guns several times, adding that the incident occurred at the Oke Ila Housing area of the state capital at about 9:00 p.m. on Friday.
But the APC in the state denied involvement in the attack, saying it was wrong to ascribe the attack to either politics or the opposition party in the state.
The publicity secretary of the APC in the state, Chief Taiwo Olatunbosun, who reacted to the allegation, said: “I don’t want to join issues with Adebayo. But Is it President Buhari or his wife, Aisha that would send hoodlums to attack him? He is taking politics to a ridiculous and embarrassing level. If Governor Fayose and the National Publicity Secretary of the PDP are walking on the streets, nobody would attack them.
“Let Jackson (Adebayo) stop night crawling. That is not an issue that he should politicise. We have to sympathise with him. We as a party are not identified with violence and we’ll not be violent with the opposition. He’s just trying to attract attention to himself. I’ll advise Adebayo to report the incident to security agencies to investigate. He should not drag us into what we know nothing about. President Buhari and his wife would not do such a thing.”
Commenting on the development, the Chairman of PDP in the state, Mr. Gboyega Oguntuase, accused APC of fomenting violence in the state.
The Public Relations Officer of the Ekiti State Police Command, Mr. Alberto Adeyemi, said the incident had been reported to the police in the state, saying “we are still investigating the incident.”
