The clash in Ile-Ife

Ile-Ife, the peaceful ancient city to which the Yoruba trace their ancestral roots, erupted in violence on March 8, as an altercation between a female indigene and a Hausa man in the Sabo area of the town largely occupied by Northerners, degenerated into a bloody communal fight between the Ife and the Hausa. At the end of the free-for-all, in which all manner of knives, guns, bows and arrows were reportedly deployed by both sides, 40 people were said to have been killed while scores of others were hospitalised.
Earlier efforts to get to the root of the clash between Ife citizens and the Hausa settler community have so far thrown up little other than the fact that it followed a quarrel between the Yoruba lady named Kuburat and the Hausa man who wanted to keep his goods in her shop against her wish. Her attempt to resist his move led to claims and counterclaims that he slapped and further assaulted her, which made the colleagues of her husband in the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) to rise to her defence, while the Hausas in the Sabo community equally rose in defence of their kinsman. The rest, as it is said, is now history.
The mayhem in Ile-Ife is particularly unfortunate because of the age-old peaceful nature of the Ife people, which has been attested to by many of those who have commented on this crisis. But for the then running battle between the Ife and their neighbours in Modakeke, which was settled and never heard of again during the reign of the recently departed Ooni Okunade Sijuwade, Ife people are widely acknowledged to be easygoing and peace-loving.  Even the Hausas in Ile-Ife, who have been there for ages, are generally peace loving and well settled in the area. To my knowledge, there is no history of a clash between these Hausas and the Ife people, not even during the endless battles with Modakeke.
This is why the Federal Government and the Osun State Government have a responsibility to get to the root of this crisis. And, in doing this, they must rid themselves of the widespread allegation of bias against the Ife host community. This allegation is not unconnected with the fact that following the crisis, all the 20 persons hauled to the Federal Capital Territory by the Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, are Yoruba.
No single Hausa man, by the admission of the IG himself, was found to have committed any offence in the altercation in which both sides reportedly wielded knives and arrows, and burnt many houses belonging to both Ife and Hausa people in Sabo. It is also doubtful that those who lost their lives to the fighting have been checked, and confirmed to be only Hausa citizens. Why is it, then, that it is only the indigenes that were arrested by the Nigeria Police, while the Hausa that formed the second warring party, walked away free?   Why, again, were the suspects from only one side of the crisis swiftly whisked to Abuja, and paraded? This strange show of efficiency whenever Northerners lose their lives in any crisis in the Southern part of the country is quite alien to our security agencies. We, certainly, have not seen much of such swift arrests and parades of suspects, even though herdsmen, terrorists and individual religious fanatics have been killing Southerners and Christians in large numbers in different parts of the country in recent years.
One cannot but recall the painful murder of a certain Mrs. Bridget Agbanime by a fellow trader in broad daylight at the Kofar Wambai market in Kano, in the Northern part of the country, sometime ago. Nobody has been convicted of her murder. We also cannot recall that those who recently killed many people in Zaki Biam, and the herdsmen who launched a midnight killing spree on a community in the Eastern part of the country sometime ago, were apprehended. None of the killers in those incidents were hauled to Abuja, or paraded.
No serious attempt was even made by the security agencies to stop the killings, even though they were notified of an impending attack. Many other mass killings have been perpetrated by herdsmen in Plateau and Nasarawa states, without anyone made to answer for them.
This is not, however, to make light of the killings in Ile-Ife or to suggest that anyone who is proved beyond every doubt to have killed another person in any part of the country should not be prosecuted.
But, the first rule must be fairness to both sides. It is, indeed, very difficult to believe that there is any fairness when members of only one part of a crisis are arrested and paraded, while the others are allowed to walk away free.  It is even more questionable for the police to ask the Yoruba people to name the Hausas that participated in the crisis before they can be arrested. The argument by the police that the Yoruba people arrested can defend themselves when they are charged to court (while the Hausas were left free) is also beside the point.
In this crisis, one must commend Ooni Enitan Ogunwusi for the role he played in dousing the crisis and restoring peace.
Let the government heed the calls of the Yoruba groups who have called for equal treatment for both the Yoruba and Hausa people involved in this conflict. The judicial commission of enquiry that has also been set up to investigate this crisis should do a good job, once the police are able to come up with the suspects on both sides of the conflict.
It will not be acceptable to investigate, arrest and prosecute only the Yoruba, while the Hausa are left to go scot-free. All the other people involved in the crisis should also be arrested.  In addition, all the suspects must be regarded and treated as innocent of the charges that are to be made against them, until they are proven guilty.
No effort should be speared to avoid the impression that may be created that the northerners involved were not arrested because both the IG and President Muhammadu Buhari are from the North. Anything that is allowed to create this impression can only worsen ethnic tensions in the country. Let justice prevail for both sides of the divide.