Suspected thugs loyal to Kwara governor beat up APC party Chairman, destroys properties in Ilorin

Suspected thugs loyal to Kwara State governor, Abdulrahman Abdulrazak on Wednesday invaded the venue of the All Progressives Congress membership registration and revaluation centre and beat up the State APC Caretaker Committee Chairman, Bashir Bolarinwa.

The Caretaker Chairman, who has been having running battle with the governor over political interest, narrated how he and other party chieftains were attacked on Wednesday.

Bolarinwa told journalists that he arrived at the Government Banquet Hall, Ilorin, venue of the membership registration exercise on the invitation by the Registration Committee headed by John Danboyi for a stakeholders meeting.

He explained that the meeting was scheduled for 12.00pm, but the Banquet hall which is a government owned facility was still under lock and key as at 1.30pm which according to him, he suspected that something was wrong.

He said, “When it was around 1.30pm, I sent a message to the chairman of the Registration Committee (Danboyi), expressing surprise that the hall was still under lock and key as at 1.30 pm.

“I did not know that some AA members loyal to Gov. AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq were already inside the hall. Outside, a lot of people were mobilised; a lot of thugs were outside too, but we were never bothered.

“The hall was eventually opened at about 2 p.m; as we were about to enter, a female member of the AA group loyal to the governor came from nowhere and held my shirt and was trying to prevent me from entering the hall.”

“Bolarinwa said, it took intervention of some persons around that stopped her from harming him and.he.later entered.

“Having entered, I noticed that majority of the people in the hall were AA members who are actually the governor’s loyalists.

“Sen. Danboyi said he was not happy. But the whole thing had become uncontrollable as thugs had been mobilised. Some of the boys brought guns, they started to attack our people. Many of us sustained injuries, our vehicles were vandalised.”

Bolarinwa said the cars of the state woman leader, party stalwart Wahab Adesina, among others were destroyed. Adesina was wounded.

“The state Treasurer of the party was beaten to coma, they also took away his car. As I am talking to you now, we don’t know the whereabouts of his car because his car keys were collected from him”, he said.