2002 Report by Human Rights Watch

The OPC has been responsible for numerous acts of violence and its members have killed or injured hundreds of people. While many of their most serious attacks were directed against Hausa, or people suspected to be northerners, their victims have also included Igbo, Ijaw and people from other ethnic groups. There have even been cases where they have attacked Yoruba, both civilians and policemen. Most of their victims have been men.

Numerous eye-witness testimonies gathered by Human Rights Watch confirmed that contrary to their leaders' denials, the OPC have used a variety of weapons, including fire-arms, machetes, cutlasses, knives and daggers, which they are often seen carrying openly. There have also been several cases where they have poured acid on their victims. Frequently they set fire to the corpses of those they had killed, sometimes after mutilating them. It has been difficult to confirm the sources of the weapons used by the OPC. Small arms proliferate in Nigeria and it is easy to purchase guns and other weapons. In addition, the OPC have sometimes seized weapons belonging to the police or to suspected criminals that they have apprehended during their vigilante activities.

In the cases documented below, the victims and witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch confirmed that the perpetrators were specifically OPC members, as opposed to other Yoruba. They had been able to identify them in a variety of ways

Sagamu

In mid July 1999, there was a major clash between Hausa and Yoruba in Sagamu, Ogun State. Scores of people were killed. The violence began following an argument over customs observed during the Oro festival, an annual Yoruba event which had not been disrupted by any disputes either before or since 1999. Yoruba and Hausa had agreed to respect a traditional night-time curfew usually observed during the festival. However, according to local residents, a fight erupted between the Yoruba and the Hausa after a Hausa woman was killed by a group of Yoruba because she had broken the curfew. The fighting escalated and the OPC intervened to support the Yoruba. Both sides were armed. At least sixty-eight Hausa were killed, including three boys between the ages of ten and fifteen; some were killed with guns, but the majority were killed with cutlasses. A number of Yoruba were also killed, including one of the Oro leaders. Some people were burnt inside their house

Ketu / Mile 12 Market

On November 25 and 26, 1999, scores of people were killed when the OPC clashed with traders in Ketu / Mile 12 market in Lagos. The exact number of victims has not been confirmed, but is estimated to be more than one hundred. A senior police official who was at the scene said he saw an estimated two hundred bodies, but that others had already been buried in mass graves. The fighting is thought to have been caused by jealousy on the part of Yoruba about the perceived dominance of the market by Hausa traders


Alaba Market

In mid July 2000, a private dispute between a landlord and a tenant escalated out of control and several people were killed in the large Alaba electronics market in Lagos, as OPC members clashed with Igbo traders. The incident began when a Yoruba landlord, who had lost patience with a court case to resolve a dispute with his tenant, called in the OPC to deal with the problem instead. The tenant, an Igbo trader called Ike who dealt in electronic goods in Alaba market, returned from work one day to find his landlord and a group of OPC members waiting for him. On instruction from the landlord who pointed him out to the OPC, the OPC members attacked him, accusing him of being a criminal. Despite his denials, they beat him into a coma, allegedly in the presence of the landlord who did not respond to his pleas for help, even when the OPC set him on fire; he later died from his injuries.

Some of the victim's neighbors, wanting to avenge Ike's death, set fire to the landlord's building. The market traders, the majority of whom are Igbo, also mobilized to protest the death of their colleague. According to one of the traders' representatives, when they went to complain to the Baale [local Yoruba leader], OPC members were assembled there and attacked them. Several traders were injured. The traders ran back to the market and tension escalated. The OPC members apparently sought reinforcements and within a short time had invaded parts of the market. They smashed many of the buses owned by the Igbos and barricaded the roads. The traders decided to fight back after they discovered the body of another Igbo man who had been macheted to death by the OPC at a nearby petrol station; he was apparently found dead, clutching a Bible. As the traders tried to defend themselves, and some of them took up arms, the OPC extended the attack to other Igbo residents in the area. The police, who were called to the scene by the chairman of the electronics market association, were initially unable to stop the violence and had to send for reinforcements. Eventually, the paramilitary mobile police brought the situation under 

Ajegunle

There were two waves of clashes in Ajegunle, an area of Lagos. The first occurred in around September-October 1999, when Yoruba clashed with Ijaw, in what was seen as the aftermath of earlier, violent confrontations between Ijaw and Ilaje (a sub-group of the Yoruba) in Ondo State. Human Rights Watch did not carry out an in-depth investigation into these clashes, but spoke to some local residents of Ajegunle, who said that more than forty people were killed, most of them men. The victims included both Ijaw and Yoruba. Some were killed with machetes, others were burnt, others were shot dead. The report of the tribunal of inquiry set up by the state government into civil disturbances in Lagos State (see Section VII, 2 below) stated that the fighting did not appear to involve the entire Yoruba community in the area, but was more specifically "fighting between OPC members and Ijaw boys."


Idi-Araba

One of the more recent incidents of ethnic violence involving the OPC took place in Idi-Araba and surrounding areas in Mushin, Lagos, on February 2 to 4, 2002. Clashes between Hausa and Yoruba claimed more than seventy lives. Human Rights Watch spoke to many residents of the area and eye-witnesses of the violence, including members of the Hausa and Yoruba communities, and people from other ethnic groups who found themselves trapped by the violence. Most of them confirmed that OPC members had participated in the violence; however, Human Rights Watch has not been able to ascertain whether the violence was planned in advance by the OPC, or whether OPC members or supporters joined in to support the Yoruba once the fighting between Yoruba and Hausa had already started. A journalist who covered the crisis told Human Rights Watch: "The OPC galvanized people. They just provided the leadership and the others followed. The OPC was like a vanguard. It started off with a minor disagreement which escalated into an ethnic conflict. Many of the people involved didn't even know what had sparked it off until later."

The incident which apparently sparked off the fighting on February 2 was an argument which developed after a Hausa man defecated in an area not intended as public toilet, close to where the OPC was holding a meeting. Some Yoruba (who may or may not have been OPC members) challenged the man and asked him to pay for use of the area as a toilet. The man refused and a fight ensued. He reported the problem to his community. A larger group of Hausa then returned with him to the scene and a fight broke out between them and the Yoruba. According to the leader of the local Hausa community, the OPC then came back in a big group, armed with guns, and started fighting the Hausa, who were also armed. The situation escalated and the fighting lasted for two days.

According to residents of the area, the police did not have any visible presence until the evening of the second day. There were reports that several people were then shot dead by the police. Eventually, the military were also sent in to quell the violence and it was they, and not the police, who finally restored order.45 By that time, scores of people had been killed, both Hausa and Yoruba; more than a hundred others had been seriously injured; hundreds of houses and public buildings had been burnt to the ground. Most of the victims were adult men, but there were also several teenagers among them, and several women. The majority of deaths and injuries were inflicted with machetes; some people were also burnt to death. Some people were killed in their houses, others as they were trying to flee, yet others were shot at point-blank range or stabbed where they stood. The victims included both Hausa and Yoruba, but the evidence collected by Human Rights Watch indicates that a higher number of those killed were Hausa.

Other Incidents of Ethnic Violence

There have been several other incidents in which OPC members attacked people on the basis of their ethnicity, particularly Hausas, other northerners, and people suspected of being sympathetic to the Hausas. A Hausa trader in Lagos told Human Rights Watch how, during violent clashes at the Agege abattoir on the outskirts of Lagos, in late 2000, the OPC had targeted anyone suspected of being a Hausa: "They killed Alhaji Zubairu, a father of three from Kogi State. They asked him where he was from. He said Kogi. They said he was a Hausa man, and killed him. Actually he was a northerner, but not a Hausa.

Full report below


https://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/nigeria0203/nigeriaopc0203-03.htm

Seun must delete this... Watch it

You see, Reno has very short memory, so he thinks we all forgot the past of yorubas.

Nigeria Possess.

E don do. This was in the pass.

Let's move.

As I expected, Yorubas ran away from this thread

Walahi monkey lawon people yi
We’re criticizing your present you’re criticizing our past
Or have you forgotten Derico and how he held Anambra by the balls ?
You don’t have to have a rebuttal to everything. SE is being disturbed right now right now
Right or wrong ?

Okay sir

Mods frontpage Page Material. Nigerians know the cash stripper Boot licker o mockery. He speaks from both sides of his mouth.

He is now the darling daddy of the emilokans Nobody takes the homeless shameless hungry Cashtivist except gazelles & gaganraja decoders serious

They’ve always hated every other tribe that is not Berebe

Phoolish tribe with inbuilt hatred for others including themselves

See how their hatred cost them Ilorin

Ok

Security is the number one problem before prosperity. If Yoruba were a country this would not have happened. Hausa were never attacked in Yoruba land before Nigeria. The cause of it is Nigeria. However Hausa are the only ones with the confidence to attack people on their own land. They do it in Kaduna and Jos too while Igbos are the only ones who think they are better than other people while in the land of those other people. It is all unfortunate. Igbos are not violent but it may be because they are not in power. The only solution of course is to break up the country into manageable units. Any Yoruba that is in Europe, Hausa land or Igbo land that can not bow to and work with the owners of those cultures will be rejected by Yoruba at home. If you find it difficult to flow with the majority, then you have a problem and should check yourself. All these lands are sacred and nobody conquered anybody.