OPC not involved in violence

The leadership of the Oodua People's Congress (OPC), a Yoruba social cultural group, has defended its members over allegations of their involvement in clashes in Lagos last week, news organistions reported. The national president of the group, Frederick Fasehun, said that the recent crisis at the Mile 12 market was triggered by a struggle for leadership of it. "One administration had been in place for over 15 years. There was an election to elect a new leader and it turned up a Yoruba leader but the Hausa people did not want to leave the post and that brought up the fracas," he told the BBC. He said that a contributory factor was that some Hausas went to a nearby secondary school and started killing Yoruba students. President Olusegun Obasanjo said that 27 people died after the fighting but news reports said that the death toll could have been as high as 50. The Hausa and the Yoruba are the two largest and most politically powerful groups in Nigeria. At least 100 people died when they last clashed in July in Shagamu, in the southwest and in Kano, the biggest city in Muslim northern Nigeria.