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PDP supporters don offensive arm band
Newsdiaryonline Sat April 2,2011
In spite of INEC guideline that party members and their
loyalists should cease all
campaigns 24 hours before Election Day, supporters of the
People’s Democratic
Party (PDP) in Owan East and West Local Government Areas of Edo
State, were on Saturday
clad in offensive red and yellow arm bands respectively.
These supporters had a field day brandishing these arm bands
before soldiers and other
security agents who accorded them easy passage, as they moved
from one place and
another unleashing violence and mayhem on the people. Even
members of the
Neighbourhood Watch, employed by the LGs and those who were
having their meals in
the local food restaurants were not spared in this show of
shame. It was only the timely postponement of the election by
INEC that saved what could
have resulted to an open brawl between these PDP supporters,
said to be acting at the
behest of the party’s senatorial candidate in Edo North, Yisa
Braimoh and loyalists of
the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN).
Angry at what he interpreted as a design by the PDP to
deliberately cause confusion and frighten voters from the
polling units, Hon Pally Iriase, an ACN
House of Representatives
candidate in Owan Federal Constituency, said this rabid
display of intimidation
of the peaceful and law abiding people was not
acceptable.
A former Secretary to Edo State Government, (SSG), Iriase who
decried this brazen harassment of people in Owan in the
face of tacit consent by the security
forces, said this
attempt at intimidation and muzzling of voters must stop if
the country is to
witness a free and fair election. It would be recalled that a
member of the ACN in Owan East LGA, Hon Andrew
Osigwe cheated death by
the whiskers on Wednesday night, when his SUV was
sprayed with bullets by
thugs suspected to be loyal to the PDP senatorial candidate,
Senator, Yisa Braimoh.
Osigwe, a former councillor who was on his way to Afuze from
Ihievbe, both in Owan
East Local Government Area of Edo State, to the police
headquarters at about
9pm to lodge complaints about the massing of hundreds of thugs
in the Ihievbe home of
Braimoh, was said to have been accosted by the armed thugs who
barricaded the road
around Ivbiogwuonu junction.
As he slowed down to avoid the barricades, his Nissan Pathfinder
SUV 2005 model with
registration number AG 94 AFZ, was engulfed in a volley of
bullets, heavily shattering
the passenger side of the vehicle. According to him, “As I
slowed down to avoid the barricades, then they opened fire
and shattered the right (passenger) side. The vehicle was
heavily shattered. It’s a miracle how I survived the incident.
If you see the car, you’ll not believe somebody that drove
that vehicle survived. I’m yet to recover
from the shock”.
A former loyalist of Senator Braimoh, Osigwe, also a prominent
youth leader in Owan
East Local Government Area, traced his present predicament to
his last month’s decision to quit the PDP for the ACN due to
broken promises. This he said
was because the PDP did not offer his people any hope for the
future. “I also felt
that the Comrade Governor was doing a very good job in the state
and needed to be
supported so I opted for change”, he said.
Osigwe who earlier sent a petition to the AIG Zone 5, the state
director of the State
Security Service (SSS) and the Commissioner of Police on plan to
eliminate him on March
23, has already reported the incident to the state police
headquarters in Benin
City. The state ACN chairman, Hon Thomas Okosun who received the
news of the attack on Osigwe
with awe and trepidation, said this incident was a vindication
of the party’s earlier
warning that the PDP was deliberately muzzling his members with
the hope of whittling
the party’s capacity in the forth coming election.
While saying that the party will not lower its guards in the
face of this brazen affront,
Okosun, a former speaker of the State House of assembly called
on the police to immediately fish out the perpetrators of this
dastardly crime.
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