Kogi guber: Ignore SDP’s false alarm of planned attack – Police
The Police Command in Kogi on Monday dismissed claims by the Social Democratic Party (SDP) of planned attack on its Candidate and supporters in the state.
In a statement in Lokoja, the command’s Public Relations Officer, SP Williams Ovye-Aya, described the allegation against its Commissioner of Police, Onuoha Bethrand, as “fake, incendiary, perfidious, malicious, and misleading.”
Adejoh-Audu, Director of Communications for Murtala Ajaka’s Gubernatorial Campaign Organisation, had, in a statement, accused the state CP of planning to attack his principal and SDP supporters during campaigns in the state.
He called on the Inspector General of Police to call the CP to order and to compel him to give adequate protection to Ajaka and all SDP supporters in Kogi.
But Ovye-Aya said the allegations by Adejoh-Audu that there was a purported planned attack by the commissioner of police on Ajaka’s supporters in Kogi local government area were totally false.
“The command wishes to emphatically and categorically state that the statement is not only the figment of the imagination of Adejoh-Audu and his political candidate, Yakubu Ajaka, but completely false.
“Ajaka, we believe, has mastered the art of political gimmickry and brigandage.
The commissioner of police, who, upon assumption of duty one month ago, has so far demonstrated a high level of professionalism by providing a level playing field for all political parties and their candidates to operate in the Kogi, should not be dragged into politics.
“The SDP candidate and his campaign organisation should leave the police alone and focus on issues-based campaigns and soliciting support from the electorate instead of resorting to cheap blackmail, bullying, and arm-twisting for political sympathy from the public, who already know their tricks, gimmicks, and antecedents,” he said.
Ovye-Aya added, “The entire narrative to injure, assassinate, and malign the reputation and integrity of CP is the height of insensitivity, callousness, self-servingness, and emblematic desperation and vindictiveness.”
According to him, on June 3, along the Abuja-Lokoja road, the SDP Candidate Murtala Yakubu Ajaka and his supporters blocked and attacked the Convoy of theGovernor of Kogi, Alhaji Yahaya Bello, at Banda, some kilometres away from Lokoja.
He said that during the attack, some of the governor’s aides sustained varying degrees of injuries, and all efforts, invitations, and entreaties to Ajaka “to come and give his own side of the incident have come to naught.”
“Yet he has been moving around the nooks and crannies of the state without any molestation, even when he has no immunity. The case is still under investigation.
“In a democracy, freedom of expression is a right, but it must be accompanied by responsibility, not to hide under it’s guise to spin out lies, falsehoods, innuendos, and sensationalism.
“It shows the writer and his sponsors have no decorum, decency, or intellect and are oblivious of the legal consequences of deformation and assassination of character.
“The CP hereby appeals to Ajaka and his campaign organisation to leave him alone and stop all the negative write-ups and frivolous allegations aimed at undermining the spirited crime-fighting efforts of the police in Kogi.
“The whipping up ofsentiments against the police and heating up the state’s polity for no just cause should stop,” he pleaded.
Ovye-Aya, however, urged the good and peace-loving, highly enlightened, and politically sophisticated residents of Kogi to disregard and discountenance such mischievous and malicious information.
He advised them to be wary of being hoodwinked by merchants of violence and instead gravitate towards issues that united the state rather than those that divided it.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) recalls that the SDP candidate had recently approachedthe court through his Counsel, Chief Femi Falana (SAN), to compel the Kogi CP to ensure his and party members’ safety during the electioneering campaigns, polls, and after.
