Details have emerged of how the Assistant Organising Secretary of the All-Progressives Congress (APC) in Kano State, Abdulsalami Ginsau, died in Chida Hotels, located at Utako District, Abuja.
Ginsau, who was a lawyer, headed the committee charged with the responsibility of arranging accommodation for delegates from Kano State to the just concluded APC convention.
According to Daily Trust report, he was reported to have died on Friday, March 27, after he was allegedly trapped in a faulty elevator at the hotel’s facility.
Speaking on the matter yesterday, the Kano State chairman of the APC, Umar Haruna Doguwa, said as the person charged with the duty of arranging accommodation for delegates, Ginsau arrived in Abuja a day ahead of the convention to make hotel bookings for participants from the state.
He said the party chieftain after settling the delegates, lodged at the Chida Hotels. Doguwa said they got to know that all was not well when they could not find Ginsau during the convention on Friday, a development that forced them to begin a frantic search for him.
He said in the course of their search all over Abuja, they went to the Utako Police Division to report the matter where they were informed that there was an incident that happened at the Chida Hotel which was reported at the station.
Doguwa said upon getting to the hotel, they identified the body to be that of the deceased party chieftain. He attributed the incident to alleged negligence on the part of the hotel management.
According to him, some other delegates who were in the same hotel with the deceased had earlier raised concern that the lift at the hotel was faulty. He said the body of the deceased has since been taken for autopsy and that they were awaiting the outcome of the investigation by the police.
He raised concern over the account of the hotel’s management on the incident, urging the police to be thorough in its investigation to unravel what transpired.
When our reporter visited the Utako Division of the Nigeria Police, the Divisional Police Officer in charge said only the FCT Police Public Relations Officer, Josephine Adeh, could speak on the matter.
When Daily Trust called the FCT PPRO, someone picked the call, asking our reporter to call back as she was anchoring a programme at the time. Efforts to reach out to her later proved abortive as she did not respond to calls put across to her.
Meanwhile, a police source at the Utako division confirmed that the incident happened at Chida Hotels and it was reported at the division.
The source said that Chida Hotels management reported the incident at the Utako divisional headquarters on Saturday, March 28 and that the matter is currently under investigation.
“Chida Hotels came to report that there was an incident and we are investigating it. The ongoing autopsy is part of the investigation. The division is actively investigating the matter”, the source said.
When contacted, the Manager of Chida Hotel, Princess Oluchi, said the management will not say anything on the matter as it is currently under investigation by the police. However, a source at the hotel gave some explanations on what transpired.
According to the source, 150 rooms at the hotel were booked for APC delegates from Kano State who attended the convention in Abuja.
The source, however, said those that eventually turned up at the hotel were over 1,000, thus overwhelming the facilities, with some of the delegates occupying the premises and outside the facility.
The source added that while the management tried to raise concern over the large number of the delegates, there was resistance as the coordinators insisted, they had fully booked the hotel.
On the incident, the source said one of the hotel’s elevators malfunctioned and was forced open.
The source added that the deceased who lodged on the third floor came out of his room and entered into the malfunctioned elevator in the early hours of Friday and in the process, the elevator sank with him in it unknown to the hotel’s management.
Meanwhile, all the delegates that lodged at the hotel departed for the convention ground without knowing that something untoward had happened.
The source said that it was the following day that the hotel started perceiving an offensive odour and a search began during which the remains of the deceased were discovered.
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