APC campaign director, Shehu, alleges police siege on home

Garba Shehu, the director of the All Progressives Congress Campaign Organisation (APCCO), has accused the Nigeria police force of laying  siege on his house.

According to Shehu, he and members of his family were woken from sleep on Tuesday morning by noises from a swarm of policemen and clattering sounds of the cocking their guns.

“It was a scary situation,” he said in a statement released on Thursday evening.

“Looking from the window, I saw no less than 15 policemen bearing weapons, some in complete uniform and others not fully dressed. It was not in doubt that our Block S.A. 12, in the NNPC Quarters, Area 11, Garki was under a cordon. Two police cars blocked the incoming lane from the gate just by our block, and two others faced it blocking the exit way. A big white van with heavily tinted glasses was parked between blocks 12 and 14, which faced each other.”

Shehu said the armed policemen did not climb up to his apartment nor did he open the door to hand himself over to them.

He continued: “This situation persisted for about an hour until two things happened. Twitter and Facebook began to render accounts of the siege and the call to Muslim prayers came and passed without my family members leaving for the mosque.

“At this point, the van and three of the police vehicles drove off. The fourth one moved to the pavement by the playground with about five policemen in it. It remained there until some moments before 7am when that one too, drove off.”

Shehu further explained that since the end of the siege, he had been in communication with the Department of State Services and the police at the highest levels, but both organisations denied knowledge of the operation in the beginning.

“The police inspector-general returned after making his investigation to say that policemen were there following an emergency call by a neighbour who came under robbery attack. The telephone number of the distressed neighbour was given to me and his address was given as being Block S.A. 13.

“The police account would have been plausible and acceptable to me but for the fact that the point of action, meaning the position of the police cars, the van and the armed men were around and between my own block S.A. 12 and 14 and therefore clearly removed from block 13, which the police report indicated.

“The account of the heavily tinted van that it brought policemen from NNPC to assist the police operation is neither here nor there because both the police and the oil company denied owning a van like that.

“For us at the APC presidential campaign, the duty of communication between our party and candidates on the one hand and the voting public on the other is one that is protected by the Constitution. If any armed group of enforcers whether within the police or outside of it as many are suspecting is behind this act of intimidation think they can break our spirit, they are mistaken. We are not going to give up.‎”

When contacted, Emmanuel Ojukwu, spokes man of the police in FCT, said he “did not have any information” on the matter.

The alleged siege on Shehu’s house coincides with the claim by Bola Tinubu, national leader of APC that stern-looking soldiers were camped in front of his Lagos resident and President Goodluck Jonathan should be held responsible if anything happened to him.