AFRESH case of assassination of another prominent Nigerian was averted in Ibadan yesterday, when chairman, Senate Committee in National Planning, Senator Lekan Balogun, escaped death by the whiskers.

The lawmaker, who spoke on his encounter with four suspected assassins who came calling at dawn at his Ibadan residence, said but for divine intervention, he would have been killed by the men who found their way into his bedroom.

The four gunmen had arrived at the lawmaker's residence located at Alarere Layout, off Ife-Ibadan Expressway at about 5.50a.m.

According to the legislator who recently decamped from the Alliance for Democracy (AD) to the People's Democratic Party (PDP) to pursue his governorship ambition, two of the suspected assassins waited at the ground floor while the remaining two made for his bedroom upstairs.

At the time the gunmen arrived, Balogun said he had already woken up waiting for a cup of coffee which he had asked his househelp to prepare for him, shortly after finishing his morning prayers.

The lawmaker said the househelp came into his bedroom with two strangers, a development which prompted him to ask who they were and why she brought them into the room.

Balogun told The Guardian that upon asking these questions, the two suspected assassins immediately brought out guns and aimed to shoot him. He said he instinctively told them that they should not shoot him and summoned courage to restrain them.

"I told them... don't shoot me! Dare not." What do you want and I shouted marble, marble, the code name of my security aides", Balogun said.

"By this time, my guards had woken up in the next room when they heard my noise. They rushed out and the two armed men quickly rushed out of my bedroom."

"When I got out, I saw one of the men in the pool of his own blood."

The senator added that it later dawned on him that the suspected assassins were four and that two of them had been waiting downstairs, watching for any counter-attack.

Thanking God for sparing his life, Balogun said the gunmen were just three yards away from him even as they brandished their guns at him threatening to shoot him.

He said that one of the gunmen was killed by his security aides while another escaped with bullet wounds.

The body of the dead suspected assassin had been deposited at the Gbagi Police Station where investigation has started.