Candidate Slumps After His Release from Police Custody
Thugs Vandalized Shops Amid Late Night Gun Shots
Hon. Rinde Asagun, the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the House of Assembly elcetion in Yagba West state constituency has been allegedly attacked by some suspected thugs working for the All Progressive Congress (APC). He was subsequently arrested and detained at the Divisional Police Station, Odo-Ere, Yagba West Local Government headquarters, alongside his son Kehinde and a chieftain of the PDP in the local government, Hon Sanya Babalola.
A host of other PDP stalwarts in the local government were reportedly listed for arrest ahead of the crucial state elections slated for Saturday. The development came on the heels of intial fears expressed in the opposition camps to the effect that prominent opposition leaders had been marked to be kept out of circulation until after the elections.
Although he was said to have been released at about midnight, Thursday, Asagun, upon his release reportedly slumped in the early hours of Friday and was immediately rushed to ECWA Hospital, Egbe according to his daughter, Ronke Asagun.
His son, Kehinde Asagun and Sanya Babalola, both charged with alleged illegal possession of gun and public disturbance, respectively, were later moved to the Police Area Command in Isanlu and the Lokoja Comand.
Asagun, speaking through her daughter, told newsmen in Egbe on Friday , that some thugs led by Mr Aderonke Aro, an APC House of Assembly candidate for Yagba west, attacked him and other PDP members on his campaign train on their way back to Egbe during his final rally in the area, Thursday.
He said a team of joint military and Nigeria civil defence service corps led by the APC candidate, decided to block the highway while his team was returning from a house-to-house campaign from Ejiba, a border town in the local government . In the melee that ensued, he disclosed that no less than nine persons, all of his suporters, were injured.
According to Asagun, the APC thugs pelted stones on him, his son, other members of the family and PDP members, in the p using dangerous weapons such as knives, axes, cutlasses etc, to inflict severe injuries on his supporters, only to turned round to make spurious allegations against the victims of the attack by APC thugs.
He said "the House of Assembly candidate of the APC for Yagba West in Saturday’s election, Aderonke Aro, with the help of NSCDC personnel shut sporadically, beating and harassing us while we were trying to make peace with them. The police were made to put the story on its head, by accusing my son of being in possession of a gun. Where will he get a gun from?
“I want to call on the Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, to order immediate investigation into the matter.
”The NSCDC personnel involved in such illegal operation must be investigated and punished accordingly; uniform men must stop terrorizing our communities and our people with guns.
”We are calling on heads of all the security agencies in the state to wake up to their responsibility to forestall further humiliation and intimidation of perceived oppositions by the ruling party.
In another twist to the crisis in Yagba West, at about 10 pm that Wednesday night when news of Asagun's arrest broke out, security agents and a pocket of local vigilantes, amid tension and fears of a violent protest, took over major streets in Egbe, the commercial nerve of Yagba West council and hometown of the two opposing candidates.
Meanwhile, it was not immediately known how and when a night attack on shops belonging to a PDP chieftain was carried out. Residents of Egbe woke up Friday money to see the popular twin shop of Prince and Princess Enterprise, dealers in boutique and mobile phone accessaries located along the Kabba-Egbe-Ilorin federal owned by wife of the immediate past vice chairman of the council, Hon Omoniyi Adeyemi in outright ruins. The adorning glass dooors were were vandalized beyond repairs and goods worth millions allegedly looted by miscreants. Residents said the vandals carried out the attack by throwing stones amid firing of sporadic gun shots while residents scampered for dear lives. Fear stricken, other residents who claimed they had slept when they heard gun shots said they chose to remaine indoors for fears of the unknown.
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