Suspected gunmen alleged to be loyal to a faction of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Ondo State, on Thursday morning, invaded the state secretariat of the party in Oyemekun Road, Akure, the state capital.
It was a free-for-all between members loyal to the chairman, Honourable Isaac Kekemeke and the acting chairman, Saka Yusuf Ogunleye, who invaded the party secretariat to dislodge Kekemeke’s supporters in a reprisal.
Supporters of the chairman, on Wednesday, had chased away the supporters of Ogunleye-led group from the secretariat and took over the affairs of the party.
However, the aggrieved supporters who invaded the secretarial at around noon in a 18-seater bus, numbering 20 and armed with bottles, cutlass, cudgel and gun, shot sporadically into the air to scare party members at the secretariat who defied the threat and chased them away.
It took the intervention of the state police command led by Deputy Commissioner in Charge of Operations, Edward Ajogun and men of the Special Anti- Robbery Squad (SARS) to restore normalcy at the party secretariat.
Kekemeke also pointed the finger at some new defectors, accusing them of fuelling the crisis to weaken APC.
He said “their conduct was beginning to constitute an embarrassment to the leadership and a great number of party members. Their activities have become an uninteresting joke.”
He reiterated the commitment of the party to conduct credible primaries, saying that the national headquarters of the party has the exclusive right to conduct the election.
He denied the allegation of doctoring the party’s delegate list for the primaries, saying “I am to assure aspirants, members of the party and delegates to the primaries that the list of delegates will be produced by the Femi Pedro Congress Committee and as had been amended by the Chief Aro Lambo Congress Appeal Committee of the National Executive Committee.”
Meanwhile, the state chapter of the Inter-Party Advisory Council (IPAC) has called on members of the APC to sheath their sword in the interest of peace in the state.
IPAC stated this in a statement signed by its Publicity Secretary, Fagboro Oluwole, and advised all stakeholders to come together to sustain democracy.