Speaker of the House of Representatives, on Saturday night took to his personal tweeter handle to lament the gruesome killing of Hon. Olatoye Temitope Sugar, representing Lagelu/Akinyele Federal Constituency and the Chairman, House Committee on Urban Development and Regional Planning, in the lower legislative chamber, in Ibadan during the day’s gubernatorial and House of Assembly elections.
Sugar, 47, who was candidate for Oyo central in the National Assembly election held on Saturday, February 23, under the platform of Action Democratic Party, was shot in Lalupon, Ibadan by suspected political thugs in the Oyo state.
He died at the University College Hospital, Ibadan where he was rushed.
Dogara, who last week secured a return ticket to Abuja, described Sugar’s murder in election violence as “primitive, wicked, inhumane, barbaric and highly condemnable.”
“He was a fine gentleman, committed patriot, dedicated, hardworking lawmaker and worthy representative of his people. We mourn him and all those whose lives were cut short by forces of evil and soulless men.”
While expressing heartfelt condolences to families of all who lost their lives, he prayed “for speedy recovery for all those injured.”
While also condemning the high rate of killings, thuggery, ballot snatching, voter suppression and other forms of electoral malpractices, that characterized the 2019 elections, the Speaker stressed that “elections are not war and should never be, they are and should be for service to God and country and not conquest with the barrel of the gun.”
More worrisome, he continued, is the fact that some of the atrocities are “aided and abetted by security agencies,” a situation, he continued, portend great danger to democracy and the survival of the Nigerian nation, given that “the will of the people as expressed in the ballot does not always count.
“It is unbelievable that 20 years after return to civilian rule, Nigeria is still stuck in the dark, primitive and uncivilised age where elections are seen as war and a do-or-die affair.”
He therefore urged President Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal Government to set up a commission to investigate the killings and bring perpetrators to book, stressing that “the killers of Hon Sugar and all those who lost their lives in election related violence must be brought to book.”
The murder of Temitope sugar came just as election related murders of two persons in Obosi, Anambra State, as well as an election observer in neighbouring Enugu, as well as the bloodbath in Rivers, among others.
