JUST IN: Sunday Igboho Alleges Plot To Arrest Him, Says Home Under Siege

Sunday Adeyemi, a self-styled Yoruba activist, on Monday morning claimed soldiers invaded his Ibadan residence in a bid to arrest him and his supporters.

Mr Adeyemi, popularly known as Sunday Igboho, raised the alarm through his spokesperson, Olayomi Koiki, who ran a live Facebook broadcast at the car park of the activist’s residence.

Mr Koiki, who kept lampooning federal and state authorities, claimed soldiers invaded Mr Igboho’s residence at around 2 am Monday morning but that they were being resisted.

Gunshots could be heard intermittently in the background as Mr Koiki spoke. He claimed soldiers were doing the shooting but that could not be independently confirmed by PREMIUM TIMES.

It is also unclear at this time if soldiers indeed swooped on the property located in the Soka area of Ibadan. Oyo state police spokesperson, Adewale Osifeso, did not respond to PREMIUM TIMES calls and text messages seeking to clarify Mr Igboho’s claim.

The known telephone number of Nigerian Army spokesperson, Mohammed Yerima, did not connect as this reporter dialled it multiple times Monday morning.

“We are more than capable of securing ourselves, we have chased them far from here,” Mr Koiki said in the video. “I am sure you can hear gunshots. That is them shooting from afar, we cannot be intimidated because we are fully prepared and ready for them.

“By tomorrow morning, I am sure the government would come with false press statements, that it was a set of unknown soldiers, that was the same tactic they used to attack Fela’s mother. They equally used it during #EndSARS.

“They brought us a letter sometimes ago but we rejected them because the letter was what they used to kill Dele Giwa. We have chosen to be peaceful only for them to keep looking for our trouble which we won’t hesitate to give to them.”

Mr Igboho had in January led a group of men to Igangan in the Ibarapa axis of Oyo state to eject the Seriki Fulani of Igangan, Salihu Abdulkadir, triggering a face-off with the state and federal governments.

He accused Mr Abdulkadir of backing criminal herdsmen behind the kidnapping and killing of farmers and residents of the community. Mr Abdulkadir denied the allegation but he was nonetheless forcefully ejected from a community he had lived in for decades.

The federal and Oyo State governments frowned at the development, saying no citizen has the right to eject other citizens from wherever they wished to reside in the country.

But on February 1, Mr Igboho rebuffed authorities and proceeded to neighbouring Ogun State to purportedly evict herdsmen resident there. During that visit, he also vowed to dislodge herdsmen from the entire Yoruba land.

On February 26, the self-styled warlord claimed some security operatives attached to Oyo State Operation Burst attempted to arrest him at the Lagos-Ibadan expressway while on his way to meet elder statesman, Ayo Adebanjo, in Lagos.

The police and the State Security Service did not confirm that attempt to arrest Mr Igboho who posted a video clip he said was of the encounter on social media.

With Mr Koiki’s disclosure that the authorities recently tried to serve Mr Igboho a letter, it appears the country’s law enforcement might be trying to take him in for questioning.