Fresh facts have begun to emerge following a shooting inside the Presidential Villa in Abuja on Thursday evening that has continued to generate controversy.
According to Vanguard, quoting an unnamed presidential source, three shots were fired to stop Sabiu Tunde Yusuf, an aide to President Muhammadu Buhari, from leaving the Villa premises.
However, the influential presidential assistant reportedly made it out of the premises despite the shots.
The source, a Villa staff who claimed to have witnessed the incident, was quoted to have said that police officers attached to the office of the First Lady, Dr. Aisha Buhari and Sabiu came out through the artillery gate to the park opposite former Officers Mess.
“At about 6pm, I saw about four Police officers following Sabiu, he was wearing blue caftan and barefooted. We were wondering whether anything had happened to the President as Sabiu is a personal aide to the President and very influential in the government.
“They (Police) went to his house inside here (House Eight) and scaled through the fence to arrest him. Likely he had an already stationed vehicle waiting for him there before he scaled through the fence. Meanwhile, the police had their own people waiting for him there also.
“All exit points in the villa were blocked because of him.
“There was a waiting one door vehicle with a driver and one other person. Immediately Sabiu managed to enter inside the vehicle, the police officers started struggling with the driver even as the car was on motion and it nearly hit other vehicles at the park.
“The driver managed to control the steering even as the Police Officers from the First Lady office made attempts to stop without success. The Police then ordered that the barricade that leads to the entrance get should be closed as they were shouting close the gate. Unfortunately, the security personnel at the gate had closed for the day and the barricade was up.
“As the Sabiu vehicle crossed the gate, there were gunshots about three times but the vehicle managed to escape and sped off.
“There was confusion everywhere that made the security personnel majorly made up of operatives of Department of State Services, DSS, who were on duty at the Pilot gate to rush to the scene,” the source was quoted to have said.
There are conflicting reports as to the cause of the fracas, with both claiming that the First Lady had confronted the influential presidential aide for refusing to self-isolate for 14 days in line with COVID-19 protocols after getting exposed to the virus.
While one account has it that Tunde recently returned from a business trip to London with an oil magnate based in Lagos, another account reported by Guardian has it that the presidential aide visited his family in Lagos as the wife was said to have delivered a baby recently.
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