BY ANAYO OKOLI

UMUAHIA — ABIA State Government has dismissed as a hoax reported shooting at the gate of the country home of former Governor Orji Uzor Kalu, last weekend, saying it was part of the orchestrated mudslinging to smear the image of the state.

Abia State Police Command had also dismissed it and asked the public to regard the report of the said invasion of the former governor’s home “as sponsored and diversionary.”

State Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Dr. Eze Chikamnayo, said the whole thing was a fabricated story.

An aide to the former governor, Pastor Chukwudi Okoroafor, had last weekend claimed that he was trailed by gunmen on motorcycle to the gate of Camp Neya Estate, home of the former governor, who opened fire on the bus he was driving, believing he was still inside the vehicle.

The incident was said to have occurred about 10 p.m while the aide was said to be waiting for the gate to be opened for him to drive inside the compound..

But Chikamnayo dismissed the claim as “a fabrication from the pit of hell which only happened at the gate of his cerebral imagination.”

The commissioner said the former governor used that as one of his ways to raise false alarm to create a false impression that there was insecurity in the state.

He, therefore, advised the former governor to give respect to his former office and behave like “a statesman whose voice should rather be of modulation instead of instigating crisis or crying wolf where there was none.

Chikamnayo also accused the former governor of planning to incite students of the state university, ABSU, which revoke his degree certificate last week, to embark on protests in order to disrupt the prevailing peace in the state.

The commissioner warned that government would not fold its arms and allow “disgruntled politicians” to drag the state back to the dark days of insecurity and criminality.

Meanwhile, the new commissioner of police in the state, Mr. Usman Tilli Abubakar, had in a statement by his PPRO, Geoffrey Ogbonna, ASP, said the incident was not reported anywhere in the command.

According to him, “when police visited the purported scene of the incident, there were no empty shells of expended ammunition or cartridges to suggest occurrence of such incident.”