June 12: YOV to hold global rally on Owo massacre

Prominent Yoruba Diaspora Organisation, Yoruba One Voice (YOV), said it will hold a global rally to press home the demand for a thorough investigation into the Owo Catholic Church massacre that led to the death of over 38 worshippers last Sunday, with several others fatally wounded and still receiving treatment in hospital.

YOV Director of Information, Mr Tope Oladimeji, said this on Saturday in a statement made available to newsmen, expressing sadness over the incident.

The group, which noted that the Yoruba had never experienced such a terrible onslaught in its long years of history, wondered how a place of worship became the target of the terrorists.

“We are saddened by the attack on the Owo Catholic Church attack. It is only in Nigeria that you go to church or mosque to worship without an assurance that you will return home safely. That tells you how insecure Nigeria is at the moment,” the group said.

Oladimeji said the reason for the rally was to tell the world that Nigeria was not safe, maintaining that the group had embarked on the protest to drive home their demand for self-determination, adding that the global rally would draw the attention of the international community to the spate of killings in Nigeria.

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“We are holding the protest rally in about 174 countries across all the six continents. The June 12 rally is to express our condolences to the people of Owo, the government, and also to demand a thorough investigation into the killing.

“What happened in Owo was predetermined. Terrorists are on rampage in the South-West and we want to let the whole world know that the Fulani religious extremists and terrorists have decided to set Nigeria on fire.

“Our call for self-determination isn’t by chance. The situations across Nigeria have been the reason for our agitation, so today’s rally is an expression of our demand for justice.

“It is an expression of our demand for the Yoruba nation where we can live peacefully without infringing on the rights of others. Our demand is necessarily not for war, but for self-determination where we can be able to determine our destiny as a people and also as a race of over 250 million people across the world,” he said.

Oladimeji blamed the Federal Government for not having the political will to tackle the spate of insecurity in the country, insisting that the position of the Federal Government on the Owo attack that the attack was perpetrated by ISWAP showed the failures of the government.

“It is most unfortunate that the FG said last Thursday that the Owo attack was perpetrated by ISWAP, an international terrorist group. What that means to us and to the global community is that international terrorists are already in Nigeria and nobody is safe from imminent attack.

“So, YOV is using this opportunity to urge all the governors in the South-West to work on a better security initiative in order to salvage the region from terrorists,” he said.

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June 12: YOV to hold global rally on Owo massacre

Adeoye Faith