By KEMI KASUMU, General Editor
The online column article titled called WAKE UP and titled, “Release the CCTV, Ekweremadu, please” in reaction to Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu’s threat to release the CCTV in his house to tell what happened in house during the break-in by the two men he claimed wanted to assassinate him, published on Thursday by The DEFENDER Newspaper has generated reactions from important citizens including the Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Social Media, Lauretta Onochie, and former President of the Nigeria’s National Women Journalists (NAWOJ), Alhaji Fatimah Kareem.
The police through Force PRO Acting DCP Jimoh Moshood had said its preliminary investigations did not show that what happened in the depute senate president’s house was assassination but case of burglary issue. But Ekweremadu, in now escalated controversy, said the police did not do well in its handling of the attempted assassination on his life saying the police, which only gave preliminary investigations report on the crime, had concluded hastily.
The article therefore called on the Enugu State Senator to “release the CCTV, please”.
The two amazons, both members of the Nigerians in the Diaspora but one currently on national service in the Presidency of her home country, made their reactions available through “The National Interest” that is a Whatsapp social media platform where they expressed the opinion that there would not have been any threat from anybody should the police have made takeover of the so-called CCTV, if any, its first action in the house upon arrival.
The published WAKE UP article had ex-rayed what it described as unnecessary controversy being built up by the now Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) controlled Nigeria’s Senate and concluded that the way it looked, the assassination controversy, now growing up as a major political tool by the PDP as main opposition party, is more like implementation of the “Dubai strategy meeting” of some 400 PDP members led by their Presidential Candidate Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.
“In a nutshell, since Ekweremadu has continued to say that he did not believe in the preliminary report of the police that the guys that broke into his house were burglary criminals and insisted that they were assassins, threatening to release CCTV to show what actually happen, it means he, being the owner of the house, knows what the police does not know and so should be the one to prove it.
“Meanwhile, I hold that Nigerians should rise up force Ekweremadu to release the CCTV that he has threatened to release and then he should name people he can prove in that CCTV that sent the so called assailants.
“This he must do if he will not want us to believe that what has cropped up now suddenly 24 hours after the APC and Buhari government are gaining more popularity over new minimum wage for workers is not to neutralize the jubilation of Nigerians as an implementation of the Dubai meeting conclusion,” the WAKE UP article had said.
In her reaction, Buhari’s Special Assistant on Social Media, Lauretta Onochie, said, “The Nigeria Police should have already been in possession of the CCTV as first thing to do upon arrival?
“In the UK, the CCTV is the first thing the Police will obtain and look into,” she said.
Corroborating Onochie’s position, a respondent not willing to be named said, “When these PDP people talk like Ekweremadu did, boasting that he has a CCTV that he would release, you should then remember how they were responsible for the concocted video take mischievously put together simply to disparage the Inspector General of Police as one who cannot speak English which was later exposed to be fake video allegedly sponsored by the National Assembly leadership.
“So, we surely expect a CCTV footage of an Ekweremadu, deputy of a Saraki who once released photographs of his own security vehicles and presented same as vehicles that IGP sent to block his home on a particular day to be to overthrow him at the senate. That is their stock in trade,” he said.
The ex-NAWOJ President however wanted to know there was one CCTV in the first place or that if at all it was installed, whether it was working.
