There was pandemonium at the Kingsquare, Benin City, popularly called Ring Road, on Saturday when supporters of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) clashed ahead the September 19 Edo governorship election.
While Governor Godwin Obaseki and his entourage were paying courtesy call on the Oba of Benin, supporters of the governorship candidate of the APC, Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu, and the PDP’s candidate, Obaseki engaged in a shoot-out around the palace of Oba Ewuare 11, the Benin monarch.
Trouble started soon after Obaseki stormed the Oba’s palace and youths of the opposition APC in the state, raised a song to apparently disparage the governor and his entourage.
In a reprisal, the PDP youths who were at the Samuel Ogbemudia Stadium for the Edo PDP rally, massed at the Benin Airport road and roads linking the Oba’s palace, including the Plymouth Road, where they engaged the APC supporters in a free-for-all fight.
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Youths and supporters from both the APC and PDP sustained various degrees of injuries, while motorists scampered for safety as some motorists who were unlucky, had their vehicles vandalised in the heat of the confusion.
All the vehicles branded with the PDP and APC campaign logo were not spared in the attack as they tried to navigate through the Benin Airport road and the kingsquare.
It took the timely intervention of security agencies present at the palace and other team of police attachment on the convoy of the VIP’s, who included Edo billionaire, Capt. Hosa Okunbo, and the APC governorship candidate, Ize-Iyamu, to halt the violence with some people sustaining injuries.
Speaking to Journalists at the scene of the violence, some youths blame the fracas on the alleged support for a particular governorship candidate by a prominent Benin mogul, who was in the palace accompanied by the governorship candidate when the crisis erupted.
