Chief (Dr) Orikeze Vitalis Ajumbe, Beaton Music Studio Owerri Managing Director (MD), former Commissioner of Information, has disclosed that he narrowly escaped death by whiskers in the hands of hired assassins, who were armed with locally fabricated explosives, during the last election. According to Ajumbe, they became targets for resisting rigging at his Amaimo Ikeduru polling station, last Saturday, March 9, 2019, but for God’s intervention.
Narrating his ordeal during a press briefing in Owerri, Ajumbe stated that he was responsible for the cancellation of a number of booths in Ikeduru LGA where he hails from, to the extent that his own booth, electoral materials including the adhoc staff were hijacked by the hoodlums, before he alerted the police. “The development frustrated the thugs hired to rig election. At Amaimo, 11 out of 17 poling units were cancelled with a total of 41 polling units cancelled at Ikeduru for electoral malpractices, perpetrated by the contestants”.
“At central school Amaimo, it was open war with gunshots to scare away voters to enable them cart away the materials”.
According to Ajumbe, he was shocked to discover that the gladiators armed their thugs to the teeth so much that security agents were helpless. The suicide bombers who came after him and other leaders, came at about 6pm at Amaimo. But for the timely and gallant efforts of Amaimo youths who alerted the security agents, the hoodlums would have killed all the security men at the polling booth.
Ajumbe warned INEC against sweeping the incident under the carpet. He could not understand why politicians would sponsor killers and send hoodlums after their opponents, simply because they were losing election.
Responding to a question on the governorship election, he sympathized with Chief Ifeanyi Araraume, who he described as a man with capacity and vision, for losing the election after working so hard to win. “My mind still tells me that Araraume would still be a governor. Imo has missed a good governor in the person of Ifeanyi Araraume. I never asked him for anything, not even a vehicle or anything. He may have been sabotaged but, it is left for God to decide”, he stated.
Ajumbe maintained that had the electorate in Owerri zone desired quality representation, Mike Nwachukwu, the APGA candidate would have been the senator-elect, he stated, to buttress his point that the electorate are more interested in the money, not the person or his capacity to deliver on his promise.
It was on this note that Ajumbe congratulated President Muhammadu Buhari and urged him to strive to ensure that speedy reformation of the electoral Act is carried out, to forestall some of the anomalies that took place during the just concluded elections.
