Unidentified person attacks Oyo AD Guber candidate in Ibadan

THE political climate in Oyo state was saved of an unexpected crisis on Friday morning when the gubernatorial candidate of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) in the state, Oyedele Hakeem Alao, escaped death by whiskers when he was attacked at his campaign office at Oke-Itunu area Ibadan by an unidentified man, destroying the side glass of his ash-coloured Armada Nissan Jeep with registration number Lagos KJA 502 FH in the process.

The Director-General Campaign Oyedele Hakeem Alao Campaign Organisation, Barrister Ademola Adeniji stated this while addressing journalists at the campaign office on Friday.

Narrating the scenario, Barrister Adeniji stated that the attacker whose identity cannot be confirmed at the time of writing this story during the attack also went away with the food flask of the candidate.

According to him, the incident happened when Mr Alao was alighting from his car the premises of his campaign office and was about coming down of the vehicle.

He said “We are now at a critical time in the political era in the state, as soon as the incident happened we decided to make it look like as if nothing happened in order to hold our programme for the day and avoid unnecessary delay. With that, we were able to do one or two things and come back to address you.

“It is very unfortunate that we found ourselves at this type of mess again. I believe that all of us are aware that the game has just started now. And this very morning, I was on my way to the office, as soon as I come in, I saw the side glass of our gubernatorial candidate being smashed.

“Then I was briefed on the incident how he was attacked by an unidentified man whose mission nobody knows.  Engineer Hakeem Alao was driven into this premises this morning by his driver, as soon as he was alighting from the back side of the Nissan Jeep, someone just rushed in and smashed the glass of the door behind the driver’s side. This made our Guber candidate to quickly run to the main office because everything happened in the twinkle of an eye.

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“Before anybody could say anything or come outside to see what was happening, the attacker had made away with the food flask placed beside the door and escaped. Thank God his laptop which contains valuable items was not in the car.

“With this development, we don’t know the intention of the attacker or whoever that is connected with this incident. We just feel that it is high time we let people be conscious of their security and to inform the security agencies that what we’re not praying for is gradually surfacing in the political scene of the state.

“We believed that the era of hooliganism in politics has gone but it has surfaced again with the incident on the candidate of Alliance for Democracy (AD) in Oyo state, then, one needs to think twice to try to look into the theorists so that we will be able to judge the practice of what is really happening. The security department is already working on it in order to officially brief the security agencies on the incident.”

Adeniji then uses the occasion to call on the Nigerian Police to rise to its initial responsibility of protecting the lives and properties of an average citizen of this country, noting that Alao is a new breed politician and has not contested any election before that could warrant is life being hunted for.

He also called on other political parties to beef up security around their gubernatorial candidate, saying “I will just advise everybody, especially political parties to be conscious of their security because we know the beginning now, nobody can say what could be the end. All we have to do is to be security conscious.”