http://www.osundefender.org/?p=28996
•It Is A Confirmation Of Opposition’s Threats – Speaker

The Leader, Osun State House of Assembly, Honourable Timothy Owoeye, last week Wednesday escaped assassination attempt on his life in Osogbo, the State capital.

Owoeye was waylaid by four unknown gunmen with unmarked SUV car around St. Charles Grammar School, Ilesa Road in Osogbo, while he was returning to his Ilesa residence on Wednesday evening.

Narrating his ordeal to OSUN DEFENDER during an interview session, the lawmaker said: “It was God that saved me from the gunmen; I strongly believe that their inability to ascertain my identity on time aided my escape”.

He said: “The gunmen blocked my car at Sadiat Junction along Ilesa road. I drove the car while my driver sat on the passenger’s seat.They came down from their black Sport Utility Vehicle. One of them suddenly pointed his gun at me, while the other two of them were dragging the door with my driver at the other side, but my driver successfully locked the door, which prevented them from entering the car.

“It was during this process that I zoomed off and escaped from the gunmen, but my investigation from the area after the incident confirmed that they had been mounting surveillance in the area for some time before our arrival,”Owoye said.

Meanwhile, Speaker of the Osun State House of Assembly, Honourable Najeem Salaam, has condemned the assassination attempt on the Leader of the House, saying that those who were threatening the security and peace of the state might have begun to make statement.

He maintained that the state parliament would be waiting for the report of a thorough investigation by the police before stepping into the fray with a view to preventing prejudice.

Salaam then tasked all security agencies in Osun State and all states in the South-West to be up and doing in ensuring security of lives and properties of all representatives of the people in government, suggesting that all nexuses should be used on the matter.

The Speaker in a statement signed by his spokesman, Goke Butika, in Abuja stressed; “an agent of violence and nest of killers has recently given a notice that the people of Osun State would soon experience violence, because his group would make the state ungovernable for the government, and now that a lawmaker in Osun State House of Assembly was nearly assassinated, what evidence do we need to connect the dots except investigation shows otherwise?”

According to him: “When I disclosed that the threat of some politicians, who had vowed to make Osun State ungovernable should be taken serious, the statement was passed for a political game; now that the leader of the parliament in Osun State only escaped assassination by the whiskers through God, it is my belief that all clues connecting to the assassination attempt should be unraveled.

“The assassination attempt on the member of the state parliament would not be allowed to be manipulated or subverted for any reason; all arsenals at the disposal of the Assembly would be deployed to get to the root of the matter.

“A House of Assembly is an institution on its own, and no member of that institution would be allowed to contend with violence by some unscrupulous set-up, whose stock-in-trade is violence and assassination.” The statement read.

The state parliament had earlier warned the ousted governor of Ekiti State,now the National Vice-Chairman (South-West) of Peoples Democratic Party, Mr. Segun Oni, who said recently that his party would make Osun State ungovernable for Governor Rauf Aregbesola.