Bamofin Ladipo Johnson, the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) senatorial candidate for Lagos Central Senatorial District, has condemned the attack on supporters of the party at Oregun, Ikeja, describing it as a premeditated attempt to intimidate the opposition and undermine democratic participation.<\/p>\n
Johnson, in a press interview response, said the incident, which occurred along Kudirat Abiola Way, Oregun, on Friday, was not a feud between rival groups but an unprovoked attack on peaceful NDC supporters who had gathered ahead of a town hall meeting with the party\u2019s presidential candidate, Peter Obi.<\/p>\n
He described the incident as deeply troubling, noting that it reflected a disturbing pattern of political intimidation and violence across the country.<\/p>\n
The senatorial candidate also accused the country\u2019s political leadership of creating an atmosphere that emboldens political thugs through inflammatory rhetoric, particularly references to power being something to be \u201cgrabbed, snatched, and run with.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to him, such language, coupled with what he described as the body language of the presidency, could encourage political loyalists and overzealous supporters to believe they could deploy violence to undermine the democratic process without consequences.<\/p>\n
Johnson said it was not enough for the All Progressives Congress (APC) to issue routine statements distancing itself from such incidents, insisting that President Bola Tinubu must personally condemn the attack and demonstrate a clear commitment to protecting democratic rights.<\/p>\n
He called on the President to address the nation, condemn the violence unequivocally and issue firm directives to state governors, the Inspector-General of Police and heads of security agencies to prevent further political attacks.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnything short of decisive action from the top amounts to tacit endorsement,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The NDC candidate, however, declared that the attack would not intimidate the party or its supporters, insisting that the opposition remained determined to pursue its political activities across Lagos State.<\/p>\n
He maintained that any attempt to instil fear in NDC supporters or disrupt the party\u2019s growing political presence in Lagos would fail.<\/p>\n
Johnson further stressed that the constitutional rights to freedom of association, peaceful assembly and movement were guaranteed to all Nigerians under the 1999 Constitution and could not be curtailed by any political party or group of hoodlums.<\/p>\n
\u201cLagos belongs to all of us, and no one will stop us from campaigning, engaging with the electorate and offering Nigerians the purposeful leadership they deserve,\u201d he declared.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bamofin Ladipo Johnson, the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) senatorial candidate for Lagos Central Senatorial District, has condemned the attack on<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24805"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24805\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24806,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24805\/revisions\/24806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}