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From Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
Journalists covering the ongoing All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential primary were attacked with canisters of teargas and pepper spray at the entrance of the road leading to the Eagle Square venue of the Special Convention.
The journalists, numbering over 40 had assembled at the entrance, struggling to gain entrance into the complex, before police dispassed them with the several cannisters 9f teargas combined with pepper spray.
Some of them that could not withstand the effects of the attack were destabilised to the point of rolling on the floor, begging for help while others scampered into safety, applying all forms of antidote.
“My eyes, I am dying, help me, help me, police have killed me,” many of the journalists begged for help amidst the pains of more cannisters of teargas police unleashing on them.
In fact, it took the delayed intervention of the APC National Publicity Secretary (NPS) Felix Morka to facilitate the entrance of the journalists late afternoon.
Speaking to newsmen, one of journalists lamented that the security agents had kept them at the entrance for countless hours, despite repeated appeals made to them.
“There is no reason for this unprovoked attack from the police. This one is an improvement from the National Convention where urchins and area boys took over and unleashed terror on many people.
“We introduced ourselves with our tags and they even told us to organise ourselves into a single file. We did as they directed but all of a sudden they started releasing teargas on us. We are here to perform our legitimate duty but all we could get in appreciate was the suffocating teargas and pepper spray,” he quipped.
Meanwhile, as at afternoon, the leadership and stakeholders of the ruling party were still involved in hi-tech consultation of the aspirants who will emerge the candidate of the party.
Despite appeal and horsetrading techniques deployed by the party’s leadership to adopt a consensus candidate, or other efforts to appeal to other aspirants to sacrifice their ambition and step-down, agreement were yet to be reached on who will fly the presidential flag of the party for next year’s presidential election.
