Suleman said he told the alleged ministers that he would not stop talking, adding “I said, ‘If you want to come for me, please you are very free to bother yourselves, because I will keep talking’. And I kept on speaking.”
By Jeffrey Agbo
President of Omega Fire Ministries (OFM), Apostle Johnson Suleman, has claimed that some ministers threatened his life in 2017 over his condemnation of increasing violence in the country.
The Edo-based cleric’s convoy was attacked on October 21 on Warreke-Auchi Road in Edo North Senatorial District, leading to the killing of seven persons, including three police orderlies.
Suleman said in a 50-second video seen on Friday that some ministers he did not name summoned him to Abuja in 2017 and threatened him.
“In 2017, some ministers called me to Abuja after I spoke against the killings on a national scale, and they sat me down, threw a bag of money, and they said to me, ‘Take this and shut up,'” he said.
“They threw out an AK-47 (rifle), they threw out a newspaper, and they said take the money or you go by these two (AK-47 rifle and newspaper).
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“I told them that I did not understand what they meant. They said if I did not do that (make the choice of money), ‘in the next one year, we would make sure that in this country (Nigeria), you would not hold the microphone again. Keep your mouth shut.'”
Suleman said he told the alleged ministers that he would not stop talking, adding “I said, ‘If you want to come for me, please you are very free to bother yourselves, because I will keep talking’. And I kept on speaking.”
Suleman had earlier accused the police of a cover-up after one of the suspected gunmen reportedly caught alive was shot dead by the police.
Following his allegations, the outgoing Edo State commissioner of police, Abutu Yaro, now an assistant inspector-general of police, ordered the immediate withdrawal and interrogation of the divisional police officer (DPO) of Auchi, CSP Ayodele Suleiman, for debriefing at the state’s police headquarters in the Government Reservation Area (GRA), Benin.