The loss of 46 lives and bodily injuries inflicted on 96 people on March 8, 2017 in Ile Ife, during a clash between the Hausa-Fulani community and their Yoruba hosts is both condemnable in the sense of the shocking carnage so carried out and the appalling failure of security forces, especially the Police, to prevent it in the first place. We demand that every individual culpable in the senseless butchery and destruction be brought to justice.
But, following events set on course by the Police parade of 20 suspects, all Yoruba, arrested in connection with the mayhem, we wonder if the Police themselves have not set up a template to deny justice to the murdered “Ife 46” and the injured. When allegations of lopsided arrest and ethnic bias were laid against the Police following the parade of the Yoruba 20 suspects, we held our breath and waited for the Police to offer a robust and credible explanation for the curious situation.
However, not a few Nigerians were shocked when the only explanation offered by the Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Ibrahim K. Idris, was that “crime has no tribe.” While the IG’s aphorism is faultless, it flies in the face of reason in this particular instance and shores up the arsenal of those alleging a Hausa-Fulani hegemonic assault against the Yoruba Race in this situation. According to The Nation newspaper, the Ile-Ife havoc was caused by Hausa-Fulani and Yoruba “miscreants from both divides that took the law into their hands and embarked on free arson, stealing and murder” (“Hardball” The Nation, Tuesday, March 21, 2017, Back Page.)
We note, in a matter another day, that in “Hardball” The Nation newspaper, which belongs to All Progressives Congress (APC) National Leader, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, launches a macabre and insensitive dance on the graves of the Ife 46 who died in the turmoil by a hate-filled attempt to make political capital out of the carnage with its allegation of ethnic jingoism and genocidal incitement against an Ife son, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode, based on the latter’s two-part opinion article on the incident in the Vanguard Newspaper, urging the state “to do something” to him, even as it lobbed in an International Criminal Court grenade to try both Fani-Kayode and Vanguard newspaper for alleged hate crimes .
However, rather than Fani-Kayode, Afenifere, the apex Yoruba socio-cultural group and others who have alleged ethnic colourations to the Police arrest in the matter, it seems to us that the Police laid the ground for grounds for the allegations in arresting and parading the Yoruba 20 only for the Ife clash in which “miscreants from both divides…took laws into their hands.” And, rather than clarifying the issue and soothing frayed nerves, the IG’s reposte to the media after his meeting with President Buhari to brief him on the Ife crisis could only have calcify any inchoate premise of a Hausa-Fulani plot against the Yoruba Race in this matter.
If all the IG could offer the media was the quip “crime has no tribe”, would it be unreasonable to assume that he must have told the President that only the Yoruba 20 are responsible for the Ile Ife crisis? Wouldn’t that be a false investigatory and prosecutorial premise given the claim that “miscreants from both divides…took laws into their hands” in the disturbance? Did the arrested Yoruba 20 kill and injured their fellow Yoruba who died in the clash? Did the Yoruba 20 now in Police custody destroy the Yoruba property ruined in the mayhem? Since it takes two to tango, where are the Hausa-Fulani “miscreants” involved in the clash? At large? Helped to escape justice? By who? If not a single Hausa-Fulani resident in Ile Ife is culpable for the clash, could it have involved roving Hausa-Fulani militia, ubiquitously know as “herdsmen” who have often been cited as behind killings in some middle belt and South-East states, and as far afield as Delta State? Were these roving militias invited to Ile Ife to cause the havoc and then escape? Would these be foreign Fulani as claimed recently by the Northern Governors Forum through its Chairman, Governor Ibrahim Shettima of Borno State? Could they be the same Fulani hired killers who Kaduna State Governor, Nasir el-Rufai said he traced to their countries – Cameroun, Niger, Chad, Mali and Senegal – and paid money to stop killing in Southern Kaduna? Could those alleging hegemonic assault against the Yoruba Race in this matter be totally wrong? How could the country get justice for the Ife 46 killed in this senseless clash against the backdrop of ethnic biases levelled against the Police now?
We find the arrest of the Yoruba 20 and the non-arrest of any Hausa-Fulani involved in the Ife clash curious. We also find the IG’s explanation on the “lopsided arrest” questionable. These developments are unlikely to lead to justice for the Ife 46, who are of both Yoruba and Hausa-Fulani origins; citizens of this country murdered in extrajudicial circumstances.
It stands to reason that the prosecution of the Yoruba 20 cannot proceed to a logical conclusion based on the bias baggage the Police actions and statements have garnered. What court or judge would accept the argument that only the Yoruba 20 was responsible for the Ife carnage? The Police may have simply bungled the case, ab initio.
Worse still, an insistence on the part of the Police that the Yoruba 20 is the culpable party to the clash can only serve to open a confrontation with the Yoruba Race, effectively alienating the South-West against President Buhari, if the allegations of ethnic marginalisation in the arrest, opposition to it and preparations by the Yoruba People to defend the Yoruba 20 is anything to go by.
This bodes no good for the fragile ethno-regional relationship in the country today. With the undying Biafra agitation in the South-East, militant activities in the South-South, growing unease and resistance to the so-called herdsmen attacks in Southern Kaduna, the North Central in general and everywhere else, President Buhari and indeed Nigeria cannot afford to open another ethnic theatre of war with the Yoruba Race in the South-West.
The situation calls for caution. President Buhari must order the Police to fish out all aggressors responsible for the Ife crisis, be they Hausa-Fulani, Yoruba or others native or foreign. Like many advanced and progressive peoples, the Yoruba Race has evolved a very high sense of justice, which unfailingly kicks in by default whenever they face an unjust situation. The President can be rest assured therefore, that the Yoruba People would not side with their kith and kin found guilty over the Ife mayhem IF they perceive justice done in the matter. However, the President should not also expect resignation and passivity on their part IF they conclude in unison that the trial of the Yoruba 20 is a Hausa-Fulani hegemonic plot against the Yoruba Race. That would be a recipe for disaster of historic precedence. As the Afenifere Scribe, Yinka Odumakin pointed out in a recent opinion article titled, “Beware of Yoruba tiger’s tail” in the Vanguard Newspaper, on three occasions in the past – 1965, 1983, and 1993 – feelings of injustice to the Yoruba Race proved the cinders for cataclysmic conflagrations on national scales leading to the Civil War, the abortion of the Second Republic and the June 12 imbroglio. This thunder must not strike a fourth time, especially under the current situation in the country; Nigeria may not survive it.
It is all up to President Muhammadu Buhari and the Nigeria Police under his command.
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