AKINWALE ABOLUWADE, IBADAN
A Yoruba socio-cultural group, the Yoruba Global Alliance, has condemned the recent attack by a detachment of security operatives on the Soka, Ibadan residence of Sunday Adeyemo, a.k.a Sunday Igboho, describing it as irrational surrender to lawlessness and abuse of fundamental human rights.
Igboho, a Yoruba nation agitator, had gone into hiding since the Thursday night raid on his Ibadan home by security agents.
A statement by the YBA, titled, ‘Buhari’s lawlessness is becoming brazen,’ signed by Taju Tijani, its Director of Public Communications, read in parts, “The attention of Yoruba Global Alliance has been drawn to the dawn raid on the Soka, Ibadan premises of Sunday Adeyemo, popularly known as Igboho Oosha on Thursday, July 1, 2021.
“We gathered that a detachment of about 100 heavily armed men in army uniform and Directorate of State Security Services operatives shot their way in, ransacked, damaged, and kidnapped seven people, including Sunday Adeyemo’s wife. Two people were killed during the raid and the corpses were taken away.
“Also, the invaders damaged properties and vehicles running into several millions of naira. The DSS has issued a statement confirming that they carried out the attack on the premises of Sunday Igboho. They glibly paraded the seven people arrested in the premises, guns, charms, money, passport, and laptops.
“The whole nation is aware that Sunday Adeyemo resorted to self-help due to Fulani herdsmen widespread lawlessness, farm invasion, maiming, raping, kidnapping, and killing of Yoruba people in their ancestral land. All his agitational undertakings had been peaceful and his awareness rallies were conducted without violence, killing or bloodshed.
“The Yoruba Global Alliance unequivocally condemns this irrational surrender to barbarism, lawlessness, and the flagrant abuse of the fundamental human right of Sunday Adeyemo.
“It is becoming a norm under the Presidency of Muhammadu Buhari that gangsterism, knee jerk reaction, brutality, and suppression of the inalienable rights of Nigerians to peaceful protest have become the standard yardstick to measure his administration. President Muhammadu Buhari has developed a strange fascination for militarism, haughty disdain for other nationalities that form this federation.
“Self determination is a right endorsed by the United Nations and a constitutional guarantee among many nations of the world. So, any fatuous categorisations of self-determinists as criminals and troublemakers run counter to the spirit of democratic liberty.”
Insisting that nations are governed by laws and not by guns, the group said that Nigerians could not be united by force. “If this administration had pursued bandits, kidnappers, and killer Fulani herdsmen with the same ferocious zeal of brigandage, the insecurity of lives and properties that gave birth to Sunday Adeyemo would have been averted.”
