Posted by By AKEEB ALARAPE, Ibadan on
There seems to be no end in the spate of blood-letting and sponsored attacks on political office holders in Oyo State. Save for providence, a member of the State House of Assembly, Hon Abiodun Adigun, would have been killed yesterday in Ibadan, the state capital.
• 78-yr-old mum, brother beaten to pulp
There seems to be no end in the spate of blood-letting and sponsored attacks on political office holders in Oyo State.
Save for providence, a member of the State House of Assembly, Hon Abiodun Adigun, would have been killed yesterday in Ibadan, the state capital. His absence from home was what saved him when the gunmen came calling at an unholy hour.
Adigun's experience came exactly a week after a federal lawmaker, Hon. Segun Oladimeji, a.k.a Segelu, was murdered by unknown gunmen at Ejioku, a suburb of Ibadan in Lagelu Local Government Area of the state.
While Segelu was elected on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to represent Lagelu/Akinyele Federal Constituency in the House of
Representatives, Adigun is representing Akinyele 11 in the State Assembly on the platform of the All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP).
Narrating his ordeal to newsmen yesterday at Ojoo Police Station, where he lodged complaint of the incident, Adigun said that six men had stormed his family house at 7, Irepodun Street, in Ojoo area of Ibadan, around 4.am, believing that he passed the night there.
Unfortunately for the gunmen, they only met Ahmed's 78-year-old mother, Alhaja Musili Adigun Ahmed and his brother, Demola Adigun, both of whom they reportedly vented their anger on.
The lawmaker's mum told newsmen that the family members were about taking the midnight dinner (Sahur) in preparation for yesterday's fasting when the assassins forced themselves into the house, searching everywhere for the lawmaker.
'We were about to eat Sahur around 4.00am when Demola opened the back door to pray. They struck him immediately and raced up the stairs to my apartment. I asked them what the problem was and they asked me:
‘Where is your son who slept here last night?'
'I told them he had gone to his own place but they said I was lying. They started dragging me on the floor while searching the whole house. As they were conducting the search, they were beating me. They kicked me in the stomach and hit me on the head with the butt of a revolver gun that one of them was holding.
'While searching the house, one of them told his colleagues that my son was not in the house, that they were just troubling themselves. He said that if they shot me, they would just waste my life because the Honourable was not in the house," stated Mrs. Adigun, a trader at the popular Alesinloye Market.
She, however, said that the suspected assassins did not leave the house without giving her a message for her son. ‘Tell him to vacate his seat in the Oyo State House of Assembly before seven days, failure which he would be killed.'
Apparently shocked at the attempt on his life, Hon Adigun disclosed that he had since abandoned his house even before the inauguration of the House in June as a result of several threats to his life.
'Before we were sworn in, I had to abandon my house with members of my family because we heard they were looking for me. There was even a time they came to our neighborhood and asked for my house. Luckily, they were directed to a wrong place, which they later attacked," the lawmaker stated.
He said he had since informed the state Director of the State Security Services (SSS), as well as his lawyer on the plot to eliminate him, alleging that an unnamed political opponent was hatching it.
When contacted the image-maker of the Oyo State Police Command, Miss Olabisi Okuwobi, an Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP), confirmed the incident, saying two persons have been arrested in connection with the attack while investigations have commenced to unravel sponsors of the assassination attempt.