The Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) senatorial candidate for Lagos East, Adeola Adebanjo, has been hospitalised after sustaining a broken leg during an attack on party members in Lagos.
Adebanjo was said to have been injured when an iron rod pierced his leg as he fled during the attack.
The Lagos State Publicity Secretary of the NDC, Olushile Akinyemi, disclosed this on Friday on Breakfast Central, a programme on News Central Television.
Naija News had earlier reported that suspected political thugs, armed with cutlasses, cudgels and stones, had on Thursday invaded the NDC’s town hall meeting in Oregun, Ikeja, scattering chairs and forcing participants to flee.
The attack led to a clash between the hoodlums and some party supporters, who fought back by hurling chairs at them.
“I should put it on record that our senatorial candidate for Lagos East, Adeola, had his leg broken during the mayhem. He is currently in hospital as I speak,” Akinyemi said.
The NDC spokesman also disclosed that party supporters travelling from Ojo Local Government Area in three branded vehicles were attacked at Opebi before they got to the venue.
He said the attackers damaged the vehicles and stole the members’ belongings, including mobile phones.
Akinyemi said some of the stolen phones were later recovered through the intervention of the All Progressives Congress (APC) chairman in Ikeja Local Government Area.
He said the APC chairman arrived at the scene in a branded Sienna bus, asked what had happened and helped recover the phones, which were returned less than an hour later.
“But the funny thing was that we recovered the phones. The APC chairman in Ikeja Local Government recovered those phones for us,” he said.
The NDC National Publicity Secretary, Osa Director, described the attack as unfortunate and accused the APC of desperation.
“The attacks perpetrated against our members in Lagos State are unfortunate and unwarranted. The hard-earned, ruinous APC is planning to destroy our hard-earned democracy by their desperation and demonic politics of barbarism,” he told Saturday Punch.
The Lagos State chapter of the APC condemned the attack on Thursday but dismissed allegations linking it to the incident.
The party’s Publicity Secretary, Seye Oladejo, described the allegation as baseless and challenged the NDC to present credible evidence to security agencies rather than make insinuations.
