Chief Tola Adeniyi has expressed disgust and alarm at the “barbarism” displayed by police operatives in Lagos who allegedly stripped some protesters “to their underpants and yanked off their symbols of self-protection” at the recent Oodua Mega Rally at Ojota, Lagos.
Adeniyi said the act is a desecration of Yoruba people’s sacred spirituality, and that Nigerians of all faiths should rise up in condemnation of the policemen who perpetrated the act.
He said: “It should be emphasized that what those hapless citizens had on them were not in any way different from the Christian Cross or the Muslim Tesubah or the Catholic Rosary or whatever object, including the bullet-proof vest that individuals believe can offer them self-protection.
“This barbaric act of the Nigeria Police was what colonialists did to the Tivs in Nigeria and to aboriginals in North America and Australia in their supremacist craze to strip them of their symbols of spirituality, thereby destroying their faith.
“Nobody in Nigeria should under any guise rubbish the sacredness of any other people’s faith.”
Adeniyi wondered if those policemen would have stripped those protesters of their Bible of Quran if those were the objects found on them.
“Descent to primitive fascism should have a limit. Nigerians have a historic duty to stop this crude tyrannical totalitarianism. Enough is enough,” he said.
