IGANGAN: Tension as armed men return to Salihu estate; hunters, police disagree over response

Fear has gripped Igangan residents as a horde of armed Fulani men moved under the cover of night into the ruins of the igaa which former Serikin Fulani of Oyo Abdulkadri Salihu abandoned during a bloody confrontation with Igangan youth on January 26.

A resident identified as Jantaa alerted the town’s chief hunter around 7 pm Thursday.

The hunters informed Asigangan of Igangan HRH Lasisi Adeoye who in turn informed the DCO of Igangan, the National Daily learnt.

“By 11 pm, police officers were sent to Alagolo but these Fulani spies could not be found anymore. The locals did not believe the statement because police did not go along with vigilante or Amotekun,” a principal officer of the town farmers association told the newspaper.

There are worries the unidentified men returned to spy and launch reprisals that will punctuate the community’s relative slender peace.

Igangan, in the Ibarapa north of Oyo, witnessed some calm after the Yoruba activist Sunday Adeyemo aka Igboho stampeded Salihu out of the area boiling with farmer-herder crisis and banditry late January. Three Fulani men died and eight Igangan youth got wounded in the clash,

The community suspected the Fulani chief of aiding and abetting Fulani bandits in the area.

Salihu, now in Kwara, however insisted he is innocent, adding he, too, has caught Yoruba criminals, and handed them over to the police.

The National Daily learnt Taiwo Adeagbo, the secretary of the Ibarapa farmers union, has sent an SOS message to Oyo’s Commissioner of Police Ngozi Onadeko over the suspected espionage.

Adeagbo is the go-to guy on history of herders-farmers crisis across Ibarapaland.