A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Lagos State, Babatunde Bank-Anthony, has denied any link between his party and the disruption of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) town hall meeting in Lagos.
Describing the incident as disturbing, Bank-Anthony said the hoodlums responsible were not members of any political party but miscreants seeking to intimidate people for personal gain.
“It is very, very disturbing, to be sincere. What we are seeing now is beyond the political parties.
“We have all these boys and miscreants all over the place. They try to come and intimidate the people for whatever they could get from them,” he said.
Bank-Anthony spoke on Channels Television’s The Morning Brief on Friday, following the attack at the Classique Event Centre along Kudirat Abiola Way, where preparations were underway for the NDC town hall meeting.
He also claimed that the APC had suffered similar attacks in other parts of the country, citing an incident in Kaduna.
“We suffered a similar kind of attack in Kaduna. We just kept it quiet,” he said.
The APC chieftain distanced his party from political violence, insisting that it would neither tolerate nor support such acts.
“We won’t tolerate it, we won’t support it,” he said.
He called on security agencies, particularly the police, to respond more promptly to incidents of political violence, warning that perpetrators must face immediate consequences.
“We want police, Nigerian police to be more responsive, because there must be consequences, immediate consequences, otherwise we are not going to get out of this kind of hole we are in at the moment,” Anthony said.
However, an NDC candidate for the Lagos State House of Assembly, Rotimi Obasanjo, accused the APC of relying on political thuggery to maintain its influence.
“APC is a government of thuggery. We know that they rest their democracy, their influence in Nigeria and in particular Lagos on thuggery,” Obasanjo said.
He maintained that the NDC had anticipated a possible disruption and informed security agencies ahead of the meeting.
Obasanjo further accused the ruling party of being uncomfortable with the activities of opposition parties.
“They are not comfortable to see the opposition thriving. They are not, they cannot actually accommodate a peaceful organisation of events without trying to show themselves or trying to show what they are capable of in terms of thuggery and violence,” he said.
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