Olumide Akpata, the Labour Party’s nominee for governor of Edo State, has distanced himself and his group from the recent attack at the University of Benin Staff Club in the state capital.
Instead, he restated that a “highly-placed Edo State Government official who has been pulling the strings behind the scenes and orchestrating mayhem” was behind the attack, and he urged the school’s students to launch an “unrelenting campaign against me.”
This was disclosed in a message he released on Monday via his X handle. It was dated April 22, 2024, and was headed “Further statement regarding the unfortunate incident at the University of Benin (UNIBEN) Senior Staff Club.”
A fight broke out on the school grounds when Akpata, a guest at an interactive session hosted by the University of Benin Staff Club, was forcefully disrupted.
He went to see Dr Presley Osemwegie, an institution lecturer who had been hurt in the incident, and stated that he “nearly took his life by a brutal axe blow to the back of his head.”
The statement partly read, “I felt compelled to provide this further statement in respect of the deeply regrettable events that occurred at the University of Benin (UNIBEN) Senior Staff Club on Friday, 12th April 2024.
“As the attack unfolded, those present at the Staff Club will attest that upon realising that students may have been involved in the ugly incident, I immediately began to plead for leniency towards any such student. As a former student myself, I understood the grave consequences of such misguided actions on their futures. I made this same plea before the committee investigating the said incident, hoping to protect any student who may have been involved.
“However, emboldened by the apparent support of the highly-placed Edo State Government official who has been pulling the strings behind the scenes and orchestrating mayhem, some of these students have continued an unrelenting campaign against me, fabricating accounts completely lacking in truth – all seemingly in a bid to gain perceived political advantage for their benefactor.”
He called on the parents of the said students to “urgently intervene in the matter and extricate their children from the clutches of desperate politicians exploiting them,” noting that the politicians are “ready to jeopardise” the students’ lives for “immediate political gain,” at the expense of their education.
Akpata also cautioned the “desperate politicians ” who are endangering the lives of the youths to “kindly cease these reckless actions immediately,” adding that the lives of the students are more significant compared to “any fleeting political agenda.”
He said that “neither I nor anyone from my team initiated or perpetrated any attacks. Rather, we were the victims of what evidence increasingly suggests was a premeditated assault, potentially motivated by political interests.”
The LP governorship aspirant called on members of the public to join forces against “those who would stop at nothing to gain or hold onto power even at the expense of the next generation.”
