Angry supporters of All Progressives Congress (APC) legislators at the weekend prevented Edo State Police Commissioner Folunso Adebanjo from entering the vandalised legislators quarters in Benin City, the state capital.

CP Adebanjo had arrived hours after a group of heavily armed men stormed the legislators quarters and destroyed vehicles and other property belonging to APC legislators of the Edo House of Assembly.

When the police commissioner and his team later arrived at the gates of the legislators quarters, they met an angry group of fuming supporters and sympathisers of the APC legislators who rained curses on the police and prevented them from entering the scene of the crime.

To forestall further breakdown of law and order, Adebanjo refrained from forcing his way into the scene of the crime and turned his men back.

He later told newsmen that he didn’t wish to join issues with anybody, but acknowledged that the spate of political violence currently rocking the state was being sponsored by some ‘political gladiators’.

The CP promised that the police would fish out those who are causing the violence, while also informing that some arrests have been made.

The attack on the quarters is widely thought to be a reprisal following last week’s brutal beating of a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) legislator Abdulrazak Momoh which led to his hospitalisation.

Cars and walls of the legislative quarters were riddled with bullets, which gave the impression that the attackers had come on a murderous visit.

Speaker of the Edo House of Assembly, Uyi Igbe (APC), informed journalists earlier that the police commissioner did not deem it fit to respond swiftly to distress calls during the attack.

The Chief Whip, Bamidele Oloruntoba, told the House told newsmen that, since last week, policemen attached to APC legislators had been withdrawn. He wondered aloud how safe the lives of ordinary men could be in the state if a legislator is not safe.

Photo shows Edo Police Commissioner Foluso Adebanjo.

Update news