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V. THE RESPONSE OF THE OPC TO ALLEGATIONS OF VIOLENCE

OPC leaders from both the Frederick Fasehun and Gani Adams factions have consistently denied that their members use violence, despite numerous eye-witness testimonies to the contrary. Gani Adams told Human Rights Watch: "The OPC is not a violent organization. It was formed to protect the integrity of the Yoruba [...] We believe we must fight against injustice. There have been injustices since independence. [...] My own struggle is purely political and cultural."86 In a January 2000 interview with a journalist who asked him what message he had for the families who had lost their children to OPC-inspired violence, Gani Adams said: "The OPC has never insinuated or provoked any act of violence."87 Human Rights Watch researchers who spoke to Gani Adams, Frederick Fasehun, and other current or former leading members of the OPC raised a number of specific incidents with them, including some of the most serious cases mentioned in this report, in which the OPC killed and injured members of other ethnic groups. The leaders repeatedly denied that the OPC had been involved in instigating the violence. They claimed that the OPC were often unjustly blamed for violence carried out by people who have nothing to do with the organization, apart from the fact that they may be Yoruba. They complained that the OPC had been demonized and that any violence linked to Yoruba was automatically pinned on the OPC.

In a small number of cases brought to their attention, they admitted that the OPC was involved, but attempted to justify it on the grounds of self-defense. Frederick Fasehun confirmed to Human Rights Watch that the OPC had been involved in the clashes in Sagamu in 1999, but denied that it had had anything to do with those in Ketu/Mile 12 or Ajegunle. On the other hand, a former senior member of the OPC admitted that the OPC had been involved in Ketu/Mile 12, but not in Ajegunle. He described the October 2000 clashes in Ajegunle as a fight between Hausa and Yoruba: "We [the OPC] were not concerned at all [...] There was no official OPC involvement at any stage, but there could have been unofficial involvement. It was unlike Ketu, which was an OPC instruction. Ajegunle was like Idi-Araba: there was no official OPC involvement at all." However, he went on to say that the OPC could have been involved in Ajegunle if they had been directly attacked, and may have reacted in self-defense.88

In some cases where the OPC's involvement has been well-established, each faction has resorted to blaming the other, thus disowning responsibility. For example, Frederick Fasehun said: "They [Gani Adams and his supporters] shouldn't have kept the OPC name. They were no longer members of OPC, therefore the rules may not apply. Some of their members could have been involved in clashes."89 Likewise, Gani Adams blamed some of the violence in Ajegunle in 2000 on the Fasehun faction.90 However, one of the founding members of the OPC contradicted these statements by claiming that even though the two factions were often at each other's throats, they buried their differences and communicated whenever there was a crisis.91

Both factions of the OPC have consistently denied carrying and using firearms or other weapons, insisting that they use only traditional "magical" means to overpower their opponents. Gani Adams told Human Rights Watch: "Our members never carry arms, except vigilantes who carry guns to defend themselves against armed robbers. Other OPC members don't have arms but defend themselves with African mechanisms."92 Frederick Fasehun claimed that OPC members do not carry arms at all, but are taught to disarm without using weapons. 93 Another founding member claimed that the OPC did not even need to carry weapons, as the name of the organization alone was a sufficient threat or deterrent, and that people were afraid of the OPC because of their charms.

Most of the lower-ranking OPC members interviewed by Human Rights Watch also denied that the organization used violence or that its members were given arms. However, some told us that they had decided to leave the OPC after becoming disillusioned with its use of violence, particularly the Gani Adams faction. A businesswoman from Lagos who had been an OPC member for several years initially joined the Gani Adams faction, then moved to the Fasehun faction. She told Human Rights Watch: "Gani Adams was too violent. We want the OPC for peace [...] Gani Adams doesn't talk. He just fights. We should try to settle problems first."94 However, Gani Adams still retains a significant following among rank-and-file members, many of whom consider that the Fasehun faction has "sold out."

Several people close to the OPC told Human Rights Watch that the organization has an efficient system of internal communication, including in situations of crisis, through the use of mobile phones, e-mail, and other means to reach their leaders at national and local levels. The impression they gave was that the leadership was always fully informed of developments, and that there is a tight chain of command. This is in contradiction with some of the statements by the OPC leaders seeking to deny or disown acts of violence by their members, or claiming that members at the local level may have been acting spontaneously, without consultation. If the communication is as efficient and tight as some of them claim, this would mean that the OPC leaders either knew or ought to have known about and thus should be held directly responsible for the acts of violence perpetrated by their members.

Despite its persistent denials and refusal to accept responsibility for the actions of its members, the OPC leadership has shown itself sensitive to criticism in other ways. It has developed extensive propaganda and unlike many other militia and vigilante groups in Nigeria, has gone to great lengths to produce written materials which set out its side of the story. Most of the time, this has consisted in blaming its opponents (whether militia of other ethnic groups, or the police) for any outbreak of violence. When Human Rights Watch met Gani Adams and several of his close associates, they gave us several weighty reports, which include their own descriptions of specific incidents of violence, all of which absolve the OPC of any responsibility or participation in criminal acts.95

Some of these accounts use explicitly hostile language, particularly towards the Hausa. One of them, a report entitled "Strangers on the rampage," compiled by the Gani Adams faction, details a series of alleged killings of Yoruba by Hausa and by police, claiming collusion between the two and describing the police as the instruments of oppression. The report repeatedly refers to the Hausas as strangers. In the first page, it refers to "the Hausa/Fulani - the strangers and their host, the Yoruba," with the following footnote: "Stranger: a foreigner, one whose home is elsewhere."96 In a press release dated December 3, 2000, signed by the then national secretary general of the OPC, Kunle Adesokan, the OPC stated: "For the avoidance of any doubt the Oodua People's Congress is able and ready to counter any act of aggression from any part of the country especially the North since the sing-song from the north in recent time had been that of war instead of our repeated demand for a roundtable conference of all ethnic nationalities as a panacea to the imminent disintegration of the present contraption called Nigeria. We equally wish to inform the Northern leaders that North and South are naturally in the opposite direction with enough provision for everybody's need. We are not interested in things that do not belong to us but we shall recover with interest things that belong to us by any means possible." Antagonism towards the Hausa has remained a common thread in the discourse of the OPC and some other Yoruba self-determination groups, reflecting continuing frustration at the perceived dominance of northerners over previous decades-a feeling expressed by many groups in Nigeria. However, in some areas of the southwest, Yoruba and Hausa local communities have lived together peacefully for many years.

    Statements by other OPC representatives have given the impression that they are slightly embarrassed or apologetic about the organization's violent image, while at the same time refusing to condemn the violence outright. A senior OPC member told Human Rights Watch: "Most incidents of violence were spontaneous. It would be disastrous if the violence were organized at a higher level [...] No [OPC] leader would go and tell people to carry out violence, because it causes more problems for them. They wouldn't say `go and attack.' But if a rank-and-file member reported an attack and if the police were not doing anything about it, then people would want to react and we would tell them `your fate is in your own hands.'"97 Another former OPC leader said: "The crises may not have been ordered from the top but people reacted. OPC leaders won't instruct their members to be violent, but they shouldn't allow themselves to be molested. They don't intervene but act in self-defense. This doesn't destroy the central command."98

    In a discussion about the February 2002 violence in Idi-Araba, a former OPC member told Human Rights Watch: "My duty is to protect my brother and to fight to defend the Yoruba. The duty of the OPC is to intervene whenever there is a clash between Yoruba and any other group, especially if the other group has the upper hand, as they have the police on their side. The OPC is the force of the Yoruba. The Yoruba rely on them. The Hausa [in Idi-Araba] had guns and daggers and swords. When it got very bad, the message reached the OPC secretariat. The decision was taken at that level to protect the Yoruba there. Normally the members report to the secretariat who then give the go-ahead, but sometimes they start on their own if they can't get hold of the secretariat."99

    OPC leaders have also claimed that groups of youths who were not OPC members have sometimes pretended to be OPC members and to have been acting in the name of the organization, to give themselves credibility; they have said that they cannot be held responsible for the actions of these individuals, who were not in any way related to the OPC. In December 2002, OPC leaders went as far as appealing to members of the public to contact the OPC on two special phone numbers "whenever any member of the public is being harassed and challenged unjustly by anyone who claimed to be an OPC member. The number [...] should also be used to report any misdemeanor of real OPC members in order that disciplinary measures be taken against such person as this [...] was against the constitution of the congress."100

It is indeed likely that some people have been abusing or misusing the name of the OPC to raise the profile of their actions or intimidate the population. For this reason, Human Rights Watch took special care to verify the identity of perpetrators when documenting the various incidents described in this report.

86 Human Rights Watch interview with Gani Adams, Lagos, May 23, 2002.

87 Interview with Gani Adams in The News, (Lagos) January 31, 2000.

88 Human Rights Watch interview, Lagos, September 2, 2002.

89 Human Rights Watch interview with Frederick Fasehun, Lagos, May 22, 2002.

90 Human Rights Watch interview with Gani Adams, Lagos, May 23, 2002.

91 Human Rights Watch interview, Lagos, September 2, 2002.

92 Human Rights Watch interview with Gani Adams, Lagos, May 23, 2002.

93 Human Rights Watch interview with Frederick Fasehun, Lagos, May 22, 2002.

94 Human Rights Watch interview, Lagos, September 14, 2002.

95 While some of these reports can be described as little more than propaganda, others contain detailed accounts of specific cases of human rights abuses against OPC members. Human Rights Watch has not been able to verify them all.

96 This terminology is loaded in the Nigerian context, where much of the violence between different ethnic communities across the country has been caused by competition and struggles between those who see themselves as "indigenes," or original inhabitants of an area, and "settlers" or strangers, many of whom have also lived in the area for several generations. The term "settler" has often been abused by those who consider themselves "indigenes" to deny rights to people from other ethnic groups, not only in the southwest but in many parts of Nigeria. For a fuller explanation, see Human Rights Watch report "Jos: A city torn apart," December 2001.

97 Human Rights Watch telephone interview, July 12, 2002.

98 Human Rights Watch interview, Lagos, September 2, 2002.

99 Human Rights Watch interview, Lagos, September 14, 2002.

100 See "OPC to arrest political thugs during 2003 polls, says Fasehun," in Vanguard (Lagos), December 13, 2000.

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