Abducted Abia APC chairman yet to regain freedom – Official

The State Working Committee of the All Progressives Congress in Abia has said that the party’s Chairman, Chief Donatus Nwankpa, who was reportedly abducted on Monday night, has yet to regain his freedom from his abductors.
News Agency of Nigeria reports that Nwankpa was abducted by gunmen, while the party was tidying up preparations ahead of President Muhammadu Buhari’s presidential rally on Tuesday.
The Publicity Secretary of the party, Benedict Godson, told newsmen in Umuahia on Thursday that the chairman was still being held hostage by his abductors.
He expressed the confidence that Nwankpa “is well and safe” and that the party was waiting for his safe return.
He said: We believe that he is well and safe but we plead with his abductors to help us by releasing him.
“Right now, we are not accusing anybody,” Godson said, adding that the party “does not know whether his kidnap has political undertone.”
He described the party chairman as a kind, peace-loving and God-fearing man, who could not hurt anybody.
Godson further said that the chairman had devoted his time and resources to build the party and had taken it to an enviable height in Abia.
He said that the party was doing the necessary thing to ensure his safe return, adding that “everything is under control”.
“I believe that the situation is being handled the way it should,” he said, when he was asked whether the party had formally reported the matter to the state police command.
The party’s spokesman also said that it was not to the knowledge of the party whether the abductors had made demand for ransom before they could release him.
He said that Nwankpa was kidnapped along with his personal aide, Obioma Chigbu, who was reportedly manhandled and later set free.
Chigbu, was said to have been released by their assailants when they discovered that he was bleeding from the suture he had after a hernia surgery.
Godson said that Nwankpa, who was travelling from Umuahia to Aba, was kidnapped around 11 pm at Arungwa Junction on the Enugu-Port Harcourt Expressway.
He said that the chairman was travelling without his security aide when the assailants struck.
NAN reliably learnt that the abductors shot into the car and immobilised it before whisking the chairman and his aide away.
Meanwhile, the Police Public Relations Officer, SP Geoffrey Ogbonna, told NAN that the incident was being investigated and that the police were on top of the situation.
Already, Rev. Augustine Ehiemere, the Chairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance and Inter-Party Advisory Council, has issued a statement in Umuahia, condemning the abduction.