The National Working Committee of the Peoples Democratic Party on Wednesday said it has commenced investigation into the allegation that the senator representing Adamawa North Senatorial District, Elisha Abbo, assaulted a nursing mother.
The PDP National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Kola Ologbondiyan in a statement said the PDP, is a law-abiding and upstanding party.
He added that the party detested and completely condemned such act of lawlessness and callousness as exhibited in the video and will therefore never condone it.
According to him, the party was also shocked that the harmless victim of the unprovoked assault is said to be a nursing mother, who ought to be protected.
He said, “Though this is a personal conduct of an individual which has no bearing with the culture of our party, the PDP however holds that no responsible person will condone such an attitude.
“In the light of this, the NWC has commenced investigation into the matter and summons Senator Elisha Abbo in line with the provisions of the Constitution of the PDP and code of conduct of our members.
“In the same vein, the party has taken note of the immediate action taken by the Senate.”
The assault, which was first reported by Premium Times, had sparked outrage with many Nigerians calling for his prosecution, urging the senate to sanction him.
Meanwhile, when contacted, the 41-year-old senator told ChannelsTV that he would issue an official statement in reaction to the assault video.
Senator Abbo disclosed that the video was redacted and that he was at the shop because his sister was assaulted.
He said, “We will soon release an official statement to the viral video which happened before I became a senator where my younger sister was beaten to a pulp in a shop and I was called upon there; where I had to call an ambulance and a police to come to the scene and it got out of hand I was also assaulted.
“It is an old video, but we will soon release a statement to that effect. It was my sister that was at the store and she was assaulted. In fact, she fainted in the shop but they compressed the video and cut that part out of it.
“They took her out to resuscitate her, the one standing with a cap is a doctor, the doctor had to come to give her life. My sister is not in the video, it was completely cropped out of it.
“This is a political season and now I am now a politician. Before I was not a politician but now the reality of the fact is that I am now a politician and politicians are not people who are liked. They exhume things of 20 years and they hang it on their neck now.
“As I said before we will release a robust response to everything, and we will also ask for the entire video to be released since they have the video. We will seat and discuss about the video. Just to be clear that video was taken long before now and it was released just at this point,” he said.