By Umar Bayo Abdulwahab
Ilorin
Minister of National Planning, Dr Abubakar Suleiman, has said that he and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the state had no hands in last Saturday’s attack on crew members of Channels Television during the party’s primaries to select candidates ahead of 2015 state House of Assembly elections.
The minister, who was reacting to allegations by the state’s chapter of the Conference of Nigerian Political Party (CNPP) that he masterminded the attack, said no amount of character assassinations by the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC), and their collaborators can stop the rising consciousness among Kwarans.
This was contained in a statement issued in Ilorin yesterday by the minister’s Special Assistant (Media), Abdulrahman Abdulrauf.
It said: “It is shocking that the Kwara state chapter of the Conference of Nigerian Political Parties (CNPP), a supposed umbrella body of all political parties, could claim that the Minister/Deputy Chairman National Planning Commission, Dr. Abubakar Olanrewaju Suleiman, was the mastermind of a reported attack on the Channels Television crew by some hoodlums during the Peoples Democratic (PDP) Congress last Saturday in Ilorin.
“While we want to condemn in very strong terms the dastardly act which was carried out by the wayward persons during which the journalists were injured and their working tools
reportedly damaged, it is apt to note that those elements were not and could not have been members of the PDP in the first instance.
“Besides, is it not odd that the authors of the said statement and their sponsors could not put their thoughts together on how the minister who is the PDP leader in the state, will now turn against his own members? This is curious.
Ordinarily, we would have kept quiet and allow the mudslinging pass unanswered, but for the need to correct gross misrepresentation at the press conference. The honourable minister has no hand whatsoever in the attack. He was never even in the vicinity of the area at the time of the said attack. His hands are clean.
“The APC members masquerading under the guise of CNPP will do well by openly coming up with the so-called ‘media sources’ which told them that the minister was behind the act. It is even heart-warming that the affected journalists are clearly of the view that the ugly event was purely inflicted on them by thugs and not PDP members.”