Soldiers planning to ‘arrest’ Fayemi, says APC

The All Progressives Congress (APC) says it has learnt that a detachment of troops will place Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State under “virtual house arrest” during Saturday’s election.

The newly installed chairman, Chief John Oyegun, made the allegation at a press conference in Lagos on Friday.

He said: “We have it on good authority that a detachment of troops will be sent to the Ekiti State House on Saturday to escort Governor Fayemi to vote and then put him under virtual house arrest thereafter. This is totally unacceptable.”

Oyegun said President Goodluck Jonathan has turned Ekiti State into a war zone, warning that Nigeria was slipping into fascism.

He said less than 48 hours after he released an open letter to Jonathan warning him “to halt the impunity in Ekiti and not to plunge Nigeria into a political crisis, the federal government has now overreached itself and turned Ekiti into a war zone, where constitutional guaranteed rights have been suspended”.

The APC chairman said the final electioneering campaign of the APC candidate, Governor Kayode Fayemi, “provided the perfect setting for the Jonathan-led administration to bare its fangs with a series of arbitrariness and unconstitutional acts that threaten the very fabric of our democracy”.

He complained that several APC governors were prevented from attending the rally, stating that the helicopter that was to fly Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State from Benin to Akure was denied permission to take off by the aviation authorities apparently acting on “orders from above”.

Oyegun said: “Then while the plane bearing Gov. Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State, who is also the Chairman of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum, was allowed to land at the Akure Airport, his convoy was stopped by soldiers at the border of Ondo and Ekiti state, and ordered to return to Akure by the leader of the troops, an army captain who said he was under orders not to allow him into Ado Ekiti and threatened to shoot him if he defied his orders.

“Gov. Amaechi was detained along the road in the bush for as long as it suited the soldiers before he was forced to return to Akure. While the Governor was being detained on the road, the convoys of the Minister of Police Affairs and the Minister of State for Defence sped past and were not stopped by the troops.

“But the worst was yet to come. On arrival in Akure Airport, he found out that the airport has been shut, leaving him stranded. By the time other Governors, including Rochas Okorocha of Imo State and Ibikunle Amosun of Rivers, and party leaders including myself, Chief Bisi Akande and Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu arrived at the Akure Airport for their onward journey to their various destinations, they discovered that the airport had been shut, apparently on the same nebulous ‘orders from above’.

“Thus, all the party leaders and supporters who came to the rally from across the country, including Sokoto, Abuja, Kano, Owerri, Port Harcourt and Lagos, were forced to travel by road back to their destinations, with the dangers inherent in such night journey.”

He warned that APC would not accept the outcome of any election in Ekiti State that does not comply with “the best practices”.

Oyegun warned Jonathan not to allow Nigeria to unravel under his watch “through acts of omission or commission”.

“We urge him to take a lesson from history, and to realise that the crisis of 1965, 1983 and 1993 all started from the South-west over elections that were either manipulated or annulled. Our country is still reeling from the effects of those crises and we cannot afford to plunge the nation into another crisis,” he said.