Serving Overseer of the Citadel Global Community Church in Lagos, Pastor Tunde Bakare, on Tuesday, said he contacted popular Yoruba rights activist, Sunday Adeyemo, well known as Sunday Igboho, amid the herdsmen crisis rocking the Ibarapa area of Oyo State.
The cleric spoke in an Instagram Live Chat with popular journalist, Dele Momodu, monitored by The PUNCH.
Igboho had issued a seven-day quit notice to herdsmen accused of sundry crimes in Ibarapa and enforced same. There have been reprisals since the incident.
Bakare said, “Immediately, Sunday Igboho gave that ultimatum, I knew there was trouble if nothing was done immediately. And he carried out what he said he would carry out.
“What did I do? As an individual, I found a way of reaching out to him (Igboho). I have never met him before, never spoken to him before but I reached out to him and after a while, he called me and I said, I appeal to you by the mercies of God, two wrongs cannot make a right, you have proved your point, let us find alternative solution so that there would be no bloodbath.
“He promised to come and see me in Lagos and I had made preparations for him to come but unfortunately, his father took ill and he had to take him to the hospital.
“I followed also to ensure I prayed for the father. I told him, I am not saying you are right or you are wrong, that is not the issue but please, if you carry out this threat, it would lead to something bigger than you and you do not want to go down in history as someone who had good intention of defending the rights of his people but ended up bringing them a bloodbath.
“He thanked me and then he said he would find time to come to Lagos.”
Bakare, who said if care was not taken, there could be 10,000 Sunday Igbohos in the country, tasked security agencies to bring all perpetrators of killing, kidnapping and rape cases in Ibarapaland to book.
He added, “Let us not throw legal semantics with this issue. When people are being slaughtered and being killed and this man is reeling out the names of those who are killed and nobody has disproved that they were truly killed, whoever killed those people if they are not brought to book, then, you cannot be asking a man who is saying I want justice to say he is wrong.
“Two wrongs don’t make a right, I am not asking him to go kill anybody, I’m not asking him to take laws into his hands but I am saying would you say that those who are killed should just die for nothing?
“Where were the police and security agencies when those people were being killed? If their killers were not brought to book, we could have more than 10,000 Sunday Igbohos in one day if care is not taken.”
Punch
