The Lagos East senatorial candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), Adeola Adebanjo, has been hospitalised after sustaining a broken leg during an attack on party members in Lagos State.
The party disclosed that Adebanjo suffered the injury when an iron pierced his leg as he attempted to escape from the attackers.
The Lagos State Publicity Secretary of the NDC, Olushile Akinyemi, revealed this on Friday during an appearance on News Central Television’s Breakfast Central programme.
Suspected political thugs had reportedly invaded an NDC town hall meeting in the Oregun area of Ikeja on Thursday, attacking party supporters and forcing participants to flee.
The assailants, said to be armed with cutlasses, cudgels and stones, allegedly disrupted the gathering, scattered chairs and triggered a confrontation with some NDC members who resisted the attack by throwing chairs at them.
Speaking on the incident, Akinyemi confirmed that the party’s Lagos East senatorial candidate was among those injured.
“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 said.
Akinyemi also alleged that NDC supporters travelling from Ojo Local Government Area in three branded vehicles were attacked by suspected thugs at Opebi before reaching the town hall venue.
According to him, the attackers damaged the vehicles and made away with personal belongings, including mobile phones.
He, however, said some of the stolen phones were later recovered following the intervention of the All Progressives Congress chairman in Ikeja Local Government Area.
Akinyemi explained that the APC chairman arrived at the scene in an APC-branded Sienna bus, approached the NDC members to find out what had happened and subsequently helped recover the stolen devices.
He said some party members were contacted less than an hour later and handed their recovered phones.
“But the funny thing was that we recovered the phones. The APC chairman in Ikeja Local Government recovered those phones for us,” he said.
Reacting to the attack, the NDC National Publicity Secretary, Osa Director, described the incident as unfortunate and unwarranted.
He accused the APC of promoting what he called barbaric politics and alleged that the attacks were part of an attempt to undermine Nigeria’s democracy.
“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,” Director said.
However, the Lagos State chapter of the APC had earlier condemned the attack and denied any involvement in the incident.
The party’s State Publicity Secretary, Seye Oladejo, dismissed allegations linking the APC to the violence as baseless, challenging the NDC to submit credible evidence to security agencies instead of making public accusations.
