Abia Warriors coach, Amapakabo escapes death in Makurdi

Coach of Nigeria Professional Football League side, Abia Warriors, Imama Amapakabo, has claimed that he was nearly lynched by a fan after his side’s barren draw against Lobi Stars at the Aper Aku Stadium in Makurdi on Sunday.

According to Imama, the incident occurred immediately after the match, despite the presence of security personnel.

In an audio interview made available to our correspondent, Imama said, “I just finished the post-match conference and the boy came out of nowhere, shook his hand in my face and slapped me. I walked into the dressing room and the boy came from behind, slapped me again, collected my glasses and started attacking me. My phone fell down and the screen got broken.

“The funny thing is that this happened right inside the stadium, with the security officials there and I told them, ‘you guys are here and this boy was doing this.’

“I walked into the dressing room and I thought it had ended there. I couldn’t understand what happened because I never spoke to anybody. When I went outside, one of my managers, who was there and saw what happened, asked them why they would do that, and they wanted to start another attack. But some people came and told us to just leave the stadium.”

The gaffer added, “It is up to my management to decide what they want to do on the matter. I called Salihu Abubakar to report the incident. I tried to be calm because if I had reacted, people would say Imama had gone to fight again.”

Meanwhile, Mike Idoko, Lobi vice-chairman, denied knowledge of the incident.

“They didn’t report to anybody, at least he (Imama) knows us, but they didn’t tell anybody,” Idoko told reporters.

“We are not aware of anything like that. He knows our relationship and when something like that happened, at least we expected him to call to let us know, but he didn’t tell anybody.

“Who assaulted him and how can he be assaulted for playing a draw? This is not the first time that we played a draw at home and there was no issue of crowd violence. More so, there was no fan in the stadium.”