http://www.time.com/time/europe/webonly/
africa/2000/10/ogundamisi1.html

TIME EUROPE
Friday, October 27, 2000

Will Ethnic Violence Tear Nigeria Apart? An exclusive interview with Kayode Ogundamisi, national secretary of the Odua People's Congress

Since President Olusegun Obasanjo came to
power in May 1999 as the
country's first democratically elected leader in
more than 15 years,
thousands have been killed in clashes
between Nigeria's main ethnic
groups. The problem has been exacerbated by
the re-introduction of
Islamic Shari'a law in the predominately
Muslim north and calls by
many groups for greater autonomy within the
federation. Violence
flared this month in the commercial capital
Lagos, where more than 100
people were killed in clashes between Yoruba
nationalists from the
south and Hausa from the north.
President Obasanjo says he is working to end
the violence. He blames
recent problems on the Odua People's
Congress, a fast growing
"cultural and social group" representing
Yoruba interests. Police
recently arrested the group's mild mannered
leader Frederic Fasheun, a
physician, and 41 other members, charging
them with murder, illegal
possession of arms, and arson. TIME's
Nairobi bureau chief Simon
Robinson talked with OPC national secretary
Kayode Ogundamisi, who
escaped police custody at Lagos airport
before flying to the Kenyan
capital via Ivory Coast. "People haven't heard
our side of the story,"
says Ogundamisi. "They're just spreading
rumors that we are a
terrorist group and that we are just rag-tags
in the streets."
Excerpts:
TIME: How did the latest violence begin?
Ogundamisi: The state of insecurity in Lagos
has become alarming.
Armed robbers have taken over the state. The
police are corrupt and
inefficient. You call the police and they never
turn up. So OPC
members have formed vigilante groups. The
landlords now have to rely
on the OPC to protect them. But because of
the viciousness of these
robbers we see some vigilantes lynch them
when they catch them.
Because in most cases when they hand them
over to the police, the
police will give them the names of the
vigilantes and the armed
robbers will unleash terror on those vigilante
groups.
We now have cases where if you pick a
Hausa man and you mete out the
same thing you mete out to a Yoruba man,
because of the ethnic problem
on the ground, the Hausa community will see
it as an attack on the
entire race. This latest case was caused in
that way. OPC cadres were
on patrol [in a poor suburb of Lagos] and got
a Hausa man with arms
and ammunition. They took him to a Bale [a
traditional leader] but the
Hausa got angry and launched an attack. It
was not just OPC then. It
became Yoruba against Hausa. It went on for
three days. I personally
counted more than 150 bodies. It would have
become more than what it
was but we went around other zones and told
the Yoruba not to get
involved and calmed our own people down.
But the government just
announced that the OPC was the guilty party.
And when they sent in the
military, which is dominated by northerners, if
you had tribal marks
you were attacked and you started having
extra-judicial killings. The
government declared the OPC a violent
organization so we went
underground ... They arrested over 40 Yoruba
but not one single Hausa.
TIME: Where are the other OPC members?
Ogundamisi: I took 150 with me to Benin
where they are hiding out. The
Nigerian government wants to get the
leadership, the articulate ones,
so they can paint who's left as hoodlums.
TIME: What will you do when your Kenyan
visa expires?
Ogundamisi: I'm going to the Netherlands to
hold a press conference on
the same day Fasheun appears in court. We
want to let the world know
what the OPC is about. We want to save
Nigeria from self-destruction.
So if we do have to take any action, people
will understand that, oh,
these people have been pushed to the wall.
TIME: Is the OPC finished as a force?
Ogundamisi: The government thinks it has cut
off the head of the OPC.
But there's a new dimension to it: we have
formed OPC International. We
had a meeting at the University of Nairobi.
Yoruba living in the
Diaspora are advised to come together and
take this on. Because if the
world does not know what we actually stand
for the government will
paint us as killers. But the OPC is still very
much on the ground. I'm
keeping in touch with the cadres via e-mail.
I'm telling them not to
act now, just to keep a low profile.
TIME: How many men have you trained to
fight for the Yoruba cause?
Ogundamisi: The OPC is nothing less than 4
million people. We have
trained about 75,000 to resist state
oppression. We could launch an
attack but that should be the last option.
We're getting towards that
now, though. The government cannot
continue to kill a race. In a
situation whereby two people have a problem
and you keep clamping on
one race it becomes ethnic genocide. And we
keep telling them, the cost
of not having a sovereign conference, the cost
of not sitting down to
talk about this ethnic problem is more than
the cost of doing it.
Nigeria might just end up with what is
happening in other African
countries: chaos. You cannot suppress the
will of the people. In order
to sustain this democracy we have to solve
this ethnic problem. Ethnic
violence in Nigeria is a vicious cycle. It will
keep coming up unless
we stop it finally through a sovereign national
conference.
TIME: Is the introduction of Shari'a adding to
the ethnic problem?
Ogundamisi: That's why our people feel
aggrieved. Almost all the
northern states have introduced Shari'a
against the constitution. The
government did nothing. That's a form of
self-determination. The people
in the north say, 'We want to be an Islamic
state,' and they have
declared a law. And we in the south have not
even got to that stage. We
are only asking for dialogue. In order to
please the north the
government is clamping down on the
southwest. The mistake we keep
making in Africa is that if there's a small
uprising the government
says it's just some hoodlums. But we
shouldn't underestimate the
minority. Democracy is: the majority have
their way but the minority
would have their say. Investors are not
coming in because it's still
unstable. Forget what the government says,
no one wants to invest when
it's so unstable.