The violent side of the crisis in Edo State All Progressives Congress (APC) manifested in Abuja on Friday as two protesting groups, one supporting the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Comrade Adams Oshiomhole and the other opposing him, engaged each other in a free-for-all outside fence of the party’s National Secretariat.
The anti-Oshiomhole group had organised themselves early in the day, hanging around Blantyre Street where the party’s secretariat is located and waiting for an opportunity to make a show of its grievance.
While the anti-Oshiomhole group was waiting for the time to act, the other group, initially mistaken for a gang of political thugs as they carried no placards like the anti-Oshiomhole group to show that they were also protesters, emerged from nowhere and descended on the placard-carrying group.
The attacking group, brandishing weapons including cudgels, planks and sticks, started raining blows on their targets and all other people in sight, including journalists who were capturing the melee.
It took the swift intervention of security personnel, who had taken over all the adjoining areas of the party’s National Secretariat, in anticipation of the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting scheduled for 3 pm and which President Muhammadu Buhari and other leaders of government and the party were expected to attend, to prevent the situation from degenerating into a bloody one.
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Mobile policemen, soldiers and men of the Department of State Security (DSS) quickly stepped in to calm the situation. It took two teargas canisters to disperse the brawlers.
Narrating the incident to The Nation, one of the anti-Oshiomhole protesters, who refused to disclose his name, said his group had been mobilised across the country, adding that they were at the National Secretariat to stage a protest against Comrade Oshiomhole, targeting the NEC to be their witness.
The protester said: “The people who attacked us are definitely not protesters but political thugs. It was like they were organised to wait for us to attack us.
“We came from different parts of the country and we have only come to express our feeling about how Oshiomhole has been running the party.”
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