However, the Director of Media and Publicity for the Kogi APC Campaign Council, Kingsley Femi Fanwo, while reacting to the development in a statement issued on Tuesday, said that the accusation was a desperate move by the opposition party in Kogi and ethnic jingoists to paint the state as unsafe.
He alleged that they planned to cover up their already exposed mission of filing a petition against the November 11 election outside the period allowed under the Electoral Act.
The statement reads: “It is not hard for the discerning to see through the concocted lies and warped strategy of the SDP, as the purported attack on the Tribunal Secretary was said to have occurred on the day their dubious, anti-democratic plan was exposed
“Why was he not attacked before midnight of December 3, 2023, when the 21 21-day day window closed? Why is the SDP the first to know about the purported attack? How did they know that he was working on their so-called petition at the time he was allegedly attacked? Why has the SDP turned itself into the advocate for the Secretary? The public cannot be misled. The people know exactly what is happening.
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“We have called endlessly on the security agencies in the state to act on a series of petitions before them against the criminalities being perpetrated by the SDP and its thugs all in the name of politics.
“They commit heinous crimes, kill innocent citizens, heighten tension in the state with hate speeches under a rejected ethnic agenda and turn around to play the victims through senseless propaganda. They even blatantly accuse the security agencies of committing crimes without any arrests being made.
“The inaction of the security agencies in the face of glaring atrocities being perpetrated by these desperate politicians and ethnic jingoists has further emboldened their thugs to attack the residence of the Resident Electoral Commissioner in charge of Kogi State, something that has never happened in the history of our dear state. And now, they and their collaborators in crime have conjured a “dead on arrival” script on the attack of the Tribunal Secretary.”
