...as fraud stalls senatorial, House of reps Primaries
The Taraba state police command on Saturday rescued members of the election committee sent to conduct the Primaries of the All Progressives Congress APC for Senatorial and House of Representatives aspirants in the state.
The members were said to have been waylaid and almost lynched by aggrieved party members for allegedly conniving with a faction of the party to manipulate the election result.
It was gathered that the committee, led by Dr Muhammad Alkali who were on their way from Yola to Jalingo stopped at Pupule, a few miles from Jalingo and met with a faction of the aspirants where they allegedly handed over election results to the faction.
Some party members who got a wind of of the development rushed to the place and we’re threatening to lynch the members of the committee but the quick intervention of the police saved the situation.
A local source who spoke to our correspondent in confidence said that a team of heavily armed policemen stormed the venue and rescued the four committee members amid stiff resistance from the party members and drove them straight to the command headquarters in Jalingo.
Our correspondent who was at the command headquarters late Saturday evening reports that there uproar as thugs in company of some aspirants insisted that the four members should either produce the election materials they came with or face their wrath.
In a bid to control the situation that was very quickly degenerating into total chaos, the police resorted to the use of tear gas cannisters to dispel the agitating youths and in the process tear gassed the former Acting Governor of the state Alhaji Sani Abubakar Danladi who is also an aspirant and was on his way to the headquarters.
Meanwhile, the state police commissioner Abimbola Shokoya who has taken custody of the four rescued members of the committee said that as a command, they have no business dabbling in partisan politics but was under obligation to ensure the security of lives and property of the people at all cost.
He maintained that the situation has been brought under control. As at the time of this report, the commissioner was in a closed door meeting with the aspirants and committee members in a bid to tackling the security threat.