PDP legal adviser escapes assassination

TRAGEDY was averted yesterday in Ebonyi State when the Legal Adviser of the state chapter of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Ben Nwokpokwu, narrowly escaped an assassination attempt by unknown gunmen riding on a motorcycle.

Also, the police in Achiagu, Ezza North Council of the state where the incident took place, have adopted more stringent security measures including the enforcement of the ban on motorcycles after 6.00 p.m. and increased patrols.

Narrating his escape from the hands of the bandits, Nwokpokwu, who is leading a legal team in the election petition against Governor Martin Elechi’s election at the tribunal, disclosed that while driving to his village, Ogboji in Ezza-North Council, he was being followed by a motorcycle at top speed as he approached Community Secondary School, Nkomoro.

“As we approached the ‘T’ junction near the secondary school, I noticed the motorcycle with three passengers, two of who were armed. Before I could negotiate from the bad portion of the road to the tarred road, the two armed passengers on the bike started shooting, raining bullets first at the driver’s side and then at the back windshield”, he added.

He said that alarmed by the attack, he sped with his Renault Megane salon car. He pointed out that while he ran, the hoodlums continued raining bullets at the car, shattering the windshield completely such that when he got near the market and on account of the many bumps on the road, he and his two other occupants of the car got out and ran into the bush.

Nwokpokwu noted that when the assailants came to where the car eventually got stuck under a lorry, they continued firing shots at it, adding that when the police came to recover the car, it was discovered that the hoodlums ransacked the vehicle while one of them, according to some people at the nearby stalls, was heard saying, “the target has escaped, in Ezza dialect”.

At Achiagu police station, the Divisional Police Officer declined interview with The Guardian but one of the policemen on patrol that evening confided in this newspaper that it was a clear case of assassination, remarking that the expended shells of the bullets they picked from inside the car showed that the hoodlums were armed with brand new AK-47 and pump action rifles.

However, the state’s Police Public Relations Officer, John Eluu, said he was yet to receive details of the incident from the Achiagu division, adding that after the preliminary investigations, the command would come out with a definite stand on the attempted assassination.

He, however, disclosed that the command was mapping out new arrangements of securing the state as the Yuletide and the New Year approach. 

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Source: The Guardian

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