Amanda,The OPC must've read your mind as they've now decided to withdraw their highly valued services. God help our friends in Lagos especially our valued forumites, Folanke and Eby!
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OPC Quits Vigilante Work - Fear Grips Lagosians
P.M. News (Lagos)
August 27, 2001
Posted to the web August 27, 2001
Ayodele Lawal
Lagos
As its own way of protesting the arrest of its leader by the police last Wednesday, the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC) members have withdrawn from vigilance services in Lagos State.
P.M. News learnt that the decision to withdraw from vigilance work was taken at a meeting of its National Coordinating Council (NCC).
Investigations revealed that the NCC decided to withdraw members of the organisation from watching over lives and properties so as to expose the inadequacies of members of the Nigerian Police and to prevent any clash between them and the police as urged by Gani Adams when he was brought to court last Friday.
Apart from the protest, P.M. News learnt that the police have embarked on mass arrest of members of the OPC who are on vigilance service, including those who have been pasting 'Free Gani Adams' posters.
A source close to the congress' Coordinating Council told P.M. News that co-ordinators have been mandated to warn members in their zones not to participate in any vigilance work any longer.
The source said any member caught doing so will be dealt with in accordance with the Oodua Peoples Congress constitution. "Even when OPC men see robbers operating they should flee the scene since they are not the object of attack," says the source.
Apart from the withdrawal of its members from vigilance work, members of the OPC have also warned the Nigerian Police to desist from arresting its members.
One of the OPC co-ordinators named Adeyemi Are said: "We are warning the police that enough is enough".
Are said further that if the police continue the indiscriminate arrest of OPC members, they (the OPC) will fight back".
It would be recalled that members of the OPC have been participating actively in securing lives and properties in Lagos State since it became obvious that the fire power of the police can not contain the dare-devil robbers who have literally overrun the state.
Meanwhile, Lagosians spoken to this morning expressed regret about the decision of the OPC and affirmed that without the OPC going after robbers, armed robbery, which had assumed a worrisome dimension in the state may get even worse.
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Awo's political idea was based on the assumption that any town beyond Owo was Igbo or Hausa. Awo was not socialised; he was not a good mixer because he did not have the opportunity, which the secondary school offered. ~TOS Benson, Baba Oba of Lagos
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