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The Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG) wednesday rejected the outcome of an investigation the Nigeria Police conducted on the Yoruba-Hausa clash that claimed at least 46 lives in Ile-Ife, Osun State.
Consequently, the ARG, a pan-Yoruba socio-political group, asked the Osun State Government to constitute a judicial commission of inquiry to investigate the immediate and remote causes of the clash.
The group canvassed this position in a statement by its Publicity Secretary, Mr. Kunle Famoriyo, describing the report of the Nigeria Police as one-sided, unjust and predetermined.
On March 7, precisely, the clash had erupted between Yoruba and Hausa traders in the Sabo area of Ile-Ife in Osun State, which according to reports, claimed at least five lives on the first day.
The clash, which subsequently claimed 46 lives with 98 seriously wounded, broke out after a vehicle driven by a Yoruba man hit the wife of a Hausa trader, thus compelling the Nigeria Police to commission an investigation into the clash.
According to reports, some youths attacked the driver with machete. The situation was temporarily resolved. However, members of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) chose to fight back the following day.
In its statement yesterday, the ARG said it had been looking forward to the outcome of a thorough police investigation establishing the immediate and remote causes of the crisis.
However, the group said it was shocked at the outcome of a purported police investigation which from all indications would now appear one-sided and tending towards a predetermined outcome.
The group cited the case of Samuel Obimakinde, who was among the suspects of the Nigeria Police, noting that Obimakinde’s sin was that he was “found with a fresh cut on his head suspected to have been inflicted on him during the crisis.
“Obimakinde, according to police information, is obviously a victim. In a violent clash that involves deaths, injuries, and arson on all sides, the Nigeria Police are saying that Yoruba people are the only culprits, that Yoruba people attacked their own people and burnt the houses of their own people.
“Who would believe this? We contend that the Ife crisis, no matter how much the Police tends to make it an ethnic issue would never stand as one. It disturbingly raised the question of partisanship and cast a doubt on the police institution,” the group explained.
However, the group said the whole world “can now see the joke that the Nigeria police is in the temple of justice and fairness. What is desired is a thorough and trustworthy investigation.
“But it appears that is impossible to get from the Nigeria Police that have failed to produce a single arrest in cases of perpetual marauders and killers in Southern Kaduna, Benue and Enugu States but have within a week found a sudden ‘efficiency’ in the Ile-Ife crisis.
“Where was the police when similar crisis broke out in Mile 12, Lagos, last year during which Yoruba people were killed and their properties razed and when a LASTMA official, Tajudeen Bakare, was brazenly murdered in the process of enforcing the Rule of Law in Apapa, Lagos?
It added that the people of Yoruba “are lovers of peace, but also haters of injustice in any appearance or form. We will not allow our people to be deliberately made a scapegoat of the inherent failure of Nigeria’s nationality.”
The group, therefore, called on the Osun State Government “to inaugurate a commission of enquiry to establish the remote and immediate causes in a manner that will engender truth and reconciliation.”
