An independent photojournalist, Olumuyiwa Owolabi, has accused Senator Elisha Abbo of slew of offences bordering on breaching a business contract they had and threat to life after raising eyebrow.
Senator Abbo representing Adamawa north triggered backlash after video of him beating up a sale girl in a sex toy shop in Abuja surfaced online. Consequent upon the viral video and the protest that trailed it, the Senate constituted a committee to investigate the matter.
The senator has been drawn into another controversy by Owolabi, a photographer, who recounted his horror in his hands, alleging him of breaching a contact they had and ordering his arrest for complaining and threatening to kill him.
Owolabi said trouble erupted after Abbo refused to pay him N2.8m they agreed on when he contracted his service to be his official photographer during his ill-fated contest for Adamawa north senatorial district election in 2014, which he ran on the platform of the All Progressive Congress, APC.
The photographer, who claimed he was once in the employ of former Ekiti State governor, Ayodele Fayose, and met Abbo in the run up to the June 2014 Ekiti State governorship election which Fayose won, told Punch of how the embattled senator gave him the beating of his life, locked him up and directed the police to shoot him if he continued to insist on getting the money he owed him.
He said when Abbo ignored all his entreaties, phone calls and texts, he was left with no option than to sit in front of his hotel room enraging him in the process.
âAs soon as he came out, I began to plead with him that I had to go. The next thing he said was that I was embarrassing him. He started beating and slapping me. He told his orderly to put me inside the pickup truck. He told them to point their guns at me and that he would kill me and tell people I was a member of Boko Haram.
âWhen I heard that statement, I was shocked because I didnât know anybody there and I couldnât speak their language fluently. No one could come to my rescue when he brutalised me, causing me to sprain my ankle.
âI began begging him to just leave me and let me go that I would leave the money for him because of his action,â Owolabi told the paper.