Senator Teslim Folarin

Three days to the governorship election, Teslim Folarin, candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Oyo State, Thursday, escaped an assassination attempt by the skin of his teeth in Ibadan, the state capital.

Yekeen Olaniyi, Folarin’s special adviser on media and publicity, told The Punch in a telephone conversation, that a group of masked gunmen invaded his principal’s ancestral home at Oja’gbo area in the Ibadan North-East Local Government area of the state around 8 pm in search of Folarin who had a scheduled meeting with his family members.

In the words of Olaniyi, “Oga escaped an assassination attempt on his life this evening. He had a scheduled meeting with his family members at Oja’gbo. As you are aware, he is the one representing his family at the Olubadan line as Asaju Olubadan. So, he was supposed to hold the meeting between 6:30 and 7pm but because he was on air at a radio station, he couldn’t meet up at that time.

“He didn’t leave the radio station until around 8:40 pm. So, the gunmen invaded the area around 8pm thinking that he was there and started shooting sporadically and wounded many people.”

Olaniyi, therefore, called on the Inspector General of Police, Usman Baba, through the Oyo State Commissioner of Police, Adebowale Williams, and other security agencies “to beef up security around his boss.”