PRESS RELEASE 

Following the illegal, unconstitutional and sectional parade of 21 Ife indigenes over the recent clashes between the host community and Arewa settlers, Afenifere vowed to resist the undue deployment of federal might to settle ethnic scores. 

As a first step in this regard, we have assembled a  powerful team of Lawyers to enforce the fundamental human rights of the 21 abducted Yoruba persons.

It is a settled law that investigation and trial of suspects must take place at the scene of the crime.

We are appreciative of the many lawyers of Yoruba extraction who have taken up this challenge pro bono.

The legal team will challenge this subversion of due process while political pressure continues on why two communities would be involved in a fight and only members of one community put on trial by a police whose leadership is of the same ethnic group with the other party in conflict.

We restate the fact that the Arewa group started the killings in Ile-Ife by killing a Yoruba young man. This is clearly  missing in the skewed report by the police.

We appeal to our people to be calm while we pursue the legal angle to this challenge to our pride as a people as the first step.

Yinka Odumakin.  

National Publicity Secretary