‘NDC Lagos senatorial candidate hospitalised after attack’

The Lagos East Senatorial candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress, Adeola Adebanjo, has been hospitalised after sustaining a broken leg during an attack on party members in Lagos State, the party has said.

Adebanjo reportedly sustained the injury when an iron pierced his leg as he scrambled for safety during the attack.

The Lagos State Publicity Secretary of the NDC, Olushile Akinyemi, disclosed this on Friday while appearing on Breakfast Central, a programme on News Central Television.

Saturday PUNCH reports that suspected political thugs attacked NDC supporters on Thursday during a town hall meeting in the Oregun area of Ikeja.

The hoodlums, armed with cutlasses, cudgels and stones, reportedly invaded the venue, scattered chairs and forced participants to flee.

The incident triggered a confrontation between the attackers and some NDC supporters, who resisted the invasion by throwing chairs at the hoodlums.

Speaking on the incident, Akinyemi said, “I should put it on record that our senatorial candidate for Lagos East, Adeola, had his leg broken during the mayhem. He is currently in hospital as I speak.”

He also disclosed that NDC supporters travelling from the Ojo Local Government Area in three branded vehicles were attacked by suspected thugs at Opebi before arriving at the venue of the town hall meeting.

He said the attackers damaged the vehicles and stole belongings, including mobile phones belonging to the NDC members.

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According to Akinyemi, some of the stolen phones were later recovered through the intervention of the All Progressives Congress chairman in the Ikeja Local Government Area.

He said the APC chairman, who arrived at the scene in an APC-branded Sienna bus, approached the NDC members to ascertain what had happened and subsequently made efforts to recover the stolen phones.

He added that less than an hour later, some NDC members were contacted and handed the recovered phones.

“But the funny thing was that we recovered the phones. The APC chairman in Ikeja Local Government recovered those phones for us,” Akinyemi said.

Reacting to the incident, the NDC National Publicity Secretary, Osa Director, described the attack as unfortunate and unwarranted.

Director, in an interview with Saturday PUNCH, accused the APC of resorting to what he described as barbaric politics.

“The attacks perpetrated against our members in Lagos State are unfortunate and unwarranted. The hard-earned, ruinous APC is planning to destroy our hard-earned democracy by their desperation and demonic politics of barbarism,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Lagos State chapter of the APC had on Thursday condemned the attack while dismissing allegations linking the ruling party to the incident.

The Lagos APC State Publicity Secretary, Seye Oladejo, described the allegation as baseless and challenged the opposition party to present credible evidence to security agencies rather than make public insinuations.