A girl, simply identified as Jumoke, has been killed by a stray bullet at the Yoruba Nation rally held at Gani Fawehinmi Park, Lagos on Saturday.
The protesters are demanding a new country to be carved out of the current western region of the country.
Jumoke, whose age is about 14 years, was hit by the bullet at a shop where she sold drinks, including Yoghurt, near the venue of the rally, eyewitnesses have said.
The stray bullet came from gunshots by security operatives, who shot into the air and also threw tear gas to disperse the protesters, who had become rowdy.
The organizers pressed ahead with the rally, despite warnings by the Police authorities, who asked them to shelve the planned rally for fear of it being hijacked by street urchins.
Some protesters who spoke to journalists said the time had come for the Yoruba nation to be carved out for them since, as they claimed they have nothing in common with the other tribes in the country.
The protesters chanted various songs, including “No going back,” “We want Oodua Nation,” among others.
The while held for a while before the police dispersed the protesters.
One person who was not at the rally was Sunday Igboho, the linchpin of the clamour for a Yoruba nation and chief organizer of the protest.
Igboho is currently in hiding as the Department of State Services, Nigeria’s Spy Police has declared him wanted. This followed a raid on his residence on Thursday by operatives of the DSS, which led to a gun battle between the operatives and Igboho’s lieutenants.
The DSS later said that while Igboho escaped from the scene, two of his assistants were gunned down while 13 were arrested. The officials also seized a cache of arms, ammunition, charms and other items, Peter Afunanya, the spokesman for the agency, told journalists on Thursday.
But Igboho has denied the allegations made against him by the DSS, claiming that the weapons allegedly found in his residence were either planted in his house or the security agents brought them out from their armoury.
The Yoruba Nation protagonist said he has never killed anyone in the course of his clamour for the new country, and that he uses traditional means to protect himself.
He said the failure of President Muhammadu Buhari to protect the South-West people and the people of the entire southern Nigerian from criminals, including killer herdsmen, was what prompted him to rise up to defend his people.
“Nigerians and the international community should please be aware that the security operatives who invaded my home either planted the ammunition being paraded in the media in my home or harvested them from their armoury to frame me. The arms paraded are not mine; they are the government’s magic. I protect myself with traditional powers, not with guns,” he said on Friday in a statement issued by his spokesman.
The statement continued:
“The Federal Government framed me up and the sequence of events brings the truth bare. Why would the security agents invade my home at night and destroy my surveillance cameras before carrying out their operation if they didn’t have an ulterior motive?
“In this modern age, why did the security operatives not put on body cameras to record their activities from the point of entry to their time of exit? Their action is a testament that the Buhari regime is incurable of using a desperate approach to silence peaceful social interventions.,” Igboho said.
“The Presidency’s serial antics and desperation to acquire people’s ancestral lands across Nigeria for foreign Fulani herdsmen because they share ethnicity and occupation with the President is well known to Nigerians and the international community. I am being seen as a threat to the Fulanisation agenda in the South-West, hence the desperation to soil my name.”
The security agents that invaded his residence adopted the same style during the attack on hapless protesters at the Lekki tollgate area of Lagos during the EndSARS protest in October 2020, Igboho claimed.