APC ward congress: Why I was attacked –Ngige

Barely 48 hours after he survived attack in Awka, the Anambra State capital, at a stakeholders’ meeting of the All Progressives Congress (APC), on the conduct of ward congresses in the state, Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige, has broken his silence.
Hoodlums said to have been procured by a member of the House of Representatives and the party’s candidate in the last governorship election in the state, Tony Nwoye had allegedly made to assault the minister, before he was whisked to safety by his security detail.
The minister, yesterday, said his ultimate goal was to ensure peaceful, credible, free and fair congresses in the state, so that party members would not be disenfranchised.
A statement by head of his media office, Chikwelugo Obidiwe, said the subsequent violence that marred the stakeholders’ meeting in Awka on Sunday was not only condemnable, but a weird and dangerous phenomenon, completely unknown to opposition politics in the state.
According to him, the minister had actually intervened to rescue of one of the six members of the Ward Congress Committee, posted to the state by the national secretariat of the party, Musa Yunusa, who had been beaten black and blue by the thugs.
“The minister, already taken to safety by his security, broke away from protection, to intervene to rescue Yunusa, almost lifeless.
“The doctors, as we speak, battled to save his life at Nnamdi Azikiwe Teaching Hospital, Nnewi, from where he was transferred to another hospital, because of the JOHESU strike.
“The interest of the minister, we wish to state, once more, was to ensure a credible exercise as the leader of the party in Anambra State.
“He is neither contesting the ward chairmanship, local government, state nor even aspiring to be a national officer of the party.
“He does not, also, need to run for governorship in 2021 as the two of the persons fuelling and stage-managing the crisis are angling for.”
He, therefore, urged all party members in the state to remain calm and resolute in their zero tolerance for thuggery, cultism, violence and blood.
-Sun