GOVERNOR Gabriel Suswam of Benue State and the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) have disagreed on who was responsible for the shooting of the governor's aide at the weekend.While Suswam accused ACN members of being responsible for the attack, the state chairman of the ACN, Abba Yaro, exonerated his party although he decried the shooting.Yaro described the attack as fallout of in-house fighting in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), noting that ACN was a peaceful party, which goal was to reclaim its stolen mandate from the PDP in the state through a legitimate court process.Speaking with journalists at the Federal Medical Centre, Apir, Makurdi, shortly after a visit to his Media Adviser, Cletus Akwaya, who was still being hospitalised as a result of the attack on him last Friday night by yet-to-be identified persons, Suswam said the attack was another pointer to the threat issued recently by the elders of the ACN in a letter to President Goodluck Jonathan that they must make sure that Benue State was ungovernable for him.'I perceive this dastardly act as a direct attack to assassinate my adviser on media. It wasn't armed robbery because they did not demand anything, they just went straight to him and made efforts to kill him, it was just God that saved him.'These elders of the ACN are known and I made reports to the police and other security agencies. They must be made to answer because the lives and property of the people are now becoming unsafe. The security agencies should arrest these people who threaten violence in the state and have gone ahead to carry it out', the governor insisted.He said elections had come and gone and there was a government in place and that the masterminds of the attack should be treated as criminals.Reacting to the development, the Minister of Interior, Abba Moro, who accompanied the governor to visit his media adviser on his sick bed, urged the people to watch out for those who were all out to destroy the system because they won an election and emphasised the sanctity of the law, which required that constituted authorities must be respected.The minister further assured the people of the state of the Federal Government's collaboration with the governor to unravel the masterminds of the attacks on the people and wondered why the state, which had been very peaceful, would suddenly become hostile after the threat issued by the major opposition party in the state.Alhaji Abubakar Tsav, an erstwhile Commissioner of Police, expressed sadness over the attack, describing it as vicious. He noted that progressive people were thinking of how to bring development to their areas rather than engaging in primitive and shameful deals.He urged the people of the state to take their personal security seriously as some mad men who attached no value to human lives lived among them. He urged the police to rise up and fish out the culprits and bring them to book.
Click here to read full news..
