A source who has elected to remain anonymous for security reasons, has informed www.calitown.com that those who perpetrated Friday’s deadly attack on the convoy of former Niger Delta Affairs Minister and gubernatorial candidate of the Peoples Redemption Party, PRP, Usani Uguru Usani, on the Betem, Biase LGA axis of the Calabar/Ikom highway, did not know the convoy was his.
The source maintained that, “the minister left his Toyota Land cruiser and travelled in a smaller vehicle in the convoy. Those who riddled his sports utility vehicle, SUV, with bullets, shooting the driver’s leg in the process, thought whoever owned the vehicle was inside, but by the grace of God, they were wrong.”
We were further informed that “those in his convoy who were accosted, were beaten with matchets and his female running mate almost got blinded after several slaps to the face. These people went physical on three persons; our running mate, a House of Assembly candidate of the party and a House of Reps candidate who accompanied our principal for the burial of one of his loved ones in Nko, Yakurr LGA, Cross River Central.” An attempt to kidnap his running mate and two others failed as they escaped.
The former minister made it safely to his journey’s end but remains visibly shaken by this attack, one in a series of many that has suddenly become synonymous with a section of this long running highway.
Two persons though not in Usani’s convoy, were killed. One of the two men killed, was an Ibo businessman based in Ogoja and popularly known in Ogoja and its environs as JC, a prominent recharge card dealer. We were reliably informed that men of the Nigeria Police came to Ogoja and arrested him on the heels of a creditor’s petition. He was being taken to calabar when he was killed in the attack while the policemen who were taking him were unharmed.