admin
KANO — A blast ripped through a car park outside a stadium minutes after Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan had addressed a re-election campaign rally there yesterday, witnesses said.
Mohammed Bolari, who was at the rally, in the northeastern city of Gombe, said the explosion happened at 3:10 pm (1410 GMT) some three minutes after Jonathan’s departure.
A local reporter, who asked not to be identified, said: “The president had just passed the parking lot and we were trailing behind his convoy when the explosion happened… just 100 metres from the bus we were driving in.”
Jonathan had been speaking to supporters of his ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as part of his bid for re-election at polls in two weeks’ time.
His appearance in the city came just a day after two blasts in the city, including one that targeted a military checkpoint. At least five people were killed.
There was no claim of responsibility for Sunday’s attacks but the city has been hit by suspected Boko Haram militants in the past and suspicion was likely to fall on the extremist group.
Bolari said of the latest blast: “It’s difficult to say how many people were affected because of the confused struggle by the huge crowd leaving the venue to escape for fear of another blast.”
The local reporter said that the explosion led to unrest in the city, with crowds of angry youths attacking anyone seen with any PDP signs.
“They were shouting and denouncing the president’s visit which they blamed for the attack,” he added.
“We’d a difficult time passing through these crowds. At one point a crowd threw stones at our vehicle. Some reporters sustained cuts from smashed window screens.”
Meanwhile, Nigeria’s First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan, yesterday denied speculations in the media that she collected N3billion from the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, to facilitate the agency’s 2015 Budget.
The reports alleged that aside being paid the said amount, the President’s wife connived with a former Minister of State for Education, Chief Nyesom Wike, in a number of schemes through which they looted the resources of the NDDC.
Mrs Jonathan who reacted through a statement issued by her media assistant, Ayo Adewuyi, described the report as hoax, claiming it was aimed at misleading unsuspecting members of the public and recruiting them into an ochestrated hate campaign against her person.
Adewuyi also claimed that the report was intended to portray his principal as an overbearing and intrusive woman contrary to her well known passion for peace and advancement of the cause of women and children in Nigeria.
The statement reads below:
“Nigerians are very conversant with the workings of the National Assembly regarding passage of Budgets.
“Parliamentary process requires that the Appropriation Bill goes through first reading, second reading and third reading and subsequent harmonisation by the two chambers.
“One then wonders at which level of this process the First Lady influenced the passage of NDDC Budget that warranted her being paid N3billion for the alleged ‘Consultancy.’
“Therefore, it’ll be impossible for one single person to influence its passage or is the author trying to indict our lawmakers?
“The report is therefore, to say the least, dubious, diversionary, unfair, unkind, and totally unacceptable. Dame Patience Jonathan did no such thing,” it asserted. — AFP/Daily Post Nigeria.
Online Reporter