Akwa Ibom 2015: Umana’s campaign boss escapes assassination

Politics in Akwa Ibom has started assuming a new twist as the Director-General of the Ibom Developme

nt Network, Honourable Sonni  Udom escaped an attempt on his life in Uyo by yet-to-be identified gunmen.

Udom, a major campaign manager for a governorship aspirant in Akwa Ibom, Umana Okon Umana, made this known in a statement he made available to newsmen, over the weekend.

Udom said he escaped the planned assassination because he was out of the state when the gunmen struck at office at about 2:34p.m.

He said he had a telephone call that some gunmen had raided his office in Uyo, adding that when he returned to the state, he noticed the operation was worse than  the information passed to him.

According to him, the gunmen numbering about five invaded his official premises and held hostage, the security man, other officials/staff, students and youth corps members under internship at gun point.

The gunmen according to him, seized their phones and ransacked offices, rooms and broke into the toilet, still in search of him.

Said he: “The gunmen, according to eyewitnesses, were well-armed some with two pistols strapped to their waist. When some of them started picking phones from my staff, one of the gunmen shouted, “ Is that what we came for?” and shot him cutting of his finger,” he said.

Chief Sonni Udom who later took Journalists round the broken rooms, toilets and expended bullet shells, said “Your guess is as good as mine if God had allowed them to find me.”

“This was clearly an assassination attempt,” he said, adding, “The police and the state security service have been fully briefed and we are awaiting their reaction.”

Udom, who is a former chairman, Akwa Ibom State Property and Investment Company(APICO0 and now a Campaign Director for Umana Umana, however said the armed men who came under the guise of looking for house to rent, did not go with any valuables, as they later abandoned the phones they had seized from his staff.

Reacting to the incident, the former deputy speaker of Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly, Honourable Uwem Udoma, said the sponsors of the crime were not far from the state as they knew where it was coming from.

Udoma who was vocal in his reaction, said: “We are opposing Senate ambition being zoned to a particular individual from our District, one person was killed in Abak, my own Local Government, and I went and saw the blood and today again we are hearing an attempt on another of a great son of Abak five.”

 

via@Tribune