Former Secretary to the Government of Akwa Ibom State and governorship aspirant in the 2015 governorship elections, Umana Okon Umana has asked the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to investigate attempts on his life allegedly by agents of the Akwa Ibom State Governor, Godswill Akapbio.
In a petition to the commission written by his lawyer, Uzoma Ibegbulem, Umana said his political associates and people helping him to actualise his ambition to be governor were being terrorised.
He cited many victims of assassination and people that were kidnapped and released after a ransom had been paid purportedly on the orders of the governor and urged the commission to investigate the petition.
He also accused the Akwa State Governor of attempts on his life and that of his family ahead of the 2015 general election, stressing that the petition became necessary in order to stave off the impending breaches of his human rights or assassinations of perceived political opponents of Akpabio.
He said there was reasonable cause for the intervention of the commission just as he catalogued incidents of the said assassinations for the intervention of the body.
The petitioner alleged that “Chief Sunny Udom, the Director-General of the leading governorship aspirant in Akwa Ibom State, Umana Okon Umana was recently the target of political assassination in his office.
“He held a press conference on Thursday, May 8, 2014 where he highlighted the fact that one of the assassins lost a finger in the process of indiscriminate gun shots.
“Some security agencies to which the incident had been reported, had dismissed the reports as mere robbery as though deserves any glorification.
“Mr. Albert Ukpanah, a well known opponent of Governor Akpabio’s 2015 Senate ambition was strangled to death in his residence in Abak, Akwa-Ibom State on March 5, 2014.
“So far, anxious political associates and his family members are still waiting for answers and fear that like past political assassinations in Akwa-Ibom State, it might be business as usual.
However, the state Commissioner for Information and Communications, Aniekan Umanah, has described the allegations as “wicked lies” propagated to hoodwink unsuspecting members of the public into believing things that do not exist.
Umanah said the state government would have ignored the bare-faced falsehood and blackmail, contained in the said petition, which was aimed to taint and tarnish the hard-earned image, integrity and reputation of Akpabio, but for the imperative to save the public from being misled.
According to the commissioner, “the catalogue of purported victims of political assassinations and kidnappings cited in the petition, are merely recycled false allegations, some of which Umana, then as Secretary to the State Government, had absolved the government of complicity and which police investigative report of November 25, 2011, endorsed by then Commissioner of Police Solomon Arase, covering a gamut of the cases listed in the petition, cleared the governor and other officials of the state of any involvement in the said crimes.
He urged the public to discountenance the said petition, which was merely vindictive politics, taken too far and lacking in factual substance.
“We charge the political class to refrain from comments and concocting fictitious allegations, which are capable of undermining peace and security in our state, even as we approach the critical 2015 general election.” he said.
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