OPC leaders arraigned on treason charges

Two leaders of Oodua People’s Congress (OPC), a militia group that purports to protect the interests of Nigeria’s Yoruba people, were formally charged with treason on Monday before a federal court in Lagos. Fredrick Fasehun, a medical doctor and founder of OPC, and Ganiyu Adams, a former carpenter who heads a breakaway, more radical faction of the group, have also been accused of leading an illegal organisation. They had previously been charged before a magistrate court which had no jurisdiction to try their alleged offences. The charges described OPC as "an unlawful society that has been killing individuals and destroying public property” contrary to the provisions of the Laws of the Federation of Nigeria. The group has been blamed for violent ethnic clashes which have erupted periodically since November 1999 in Lagos, Nigeria’s biggest city, and in which hundreds of people have died. Following the 1999 clashes between Yorubas and Hausa-speaking northerners, President Olusegun Obasanjo’s government proscribed the OPC, but the group defiantly remained active. In the course of conducting self-assigned vigilante activities in the southwest, a predominantly Yoruba area, the OPC has apprehended and lynched dozens of suspected armed robbers over the past two years with the aim of ridding the society of violent crime, which is widespread. Fasehun, who had been on bail following charges initially pressed against him last year, went to court voluntarily on Monday. Adams, who was apprehended by the police in August after a 20-month manhunt, was brought to court in shackles. Justice Dan Abutu, before whom they were arraigned, granted both men bail with strict conditions and deferred the hearing to 16 October.