Details have emerged about the arrest of the leader of the demand for a Yoruba Nation, Sunday Adeyemo, with the revelation that he and his wife were arrested by the International Criminal Police Organisation.
Reports earlier on Tuesday said that Adeyemo, who is also known as Igboho, had been arrested in Cotonou in the Republic of Benin, Nigeria’s next-door neighbour in the west coast.
Yomi Alliyu (SAN), Igboho’s counsel, in a statement late Tuesday, declared that his client and wife, a German citizen, were arrested by the INTERPOL in Benin. The reports said the couple was on their way to Germany when they were arrested.
Alliyu called on the Germany government and Benin Republic to prevent the extradition of Igboho to Nigeria.
“I call upon you to rise up and curb the impunity of the Nigerian Government by refusing any application for extradition of our Client who already has an application before the International Criminal Court duly acknowledged,” he said.
Igboho’s reported arrest has set off a flurry of political and legal works in Nigeria’s Southwest.
Emeritus Professor Banji Akintoye, a renowned Historian and Leader of the Umbrella Body of Yoruba Self-Determination Groups, while confirming Igboho’s arrest on Tuesday, announced that he along with other Yoruba patriots were working to provide assistance to Igboho to prevent his extradition into Nigeria,
“Benin Republic is a land that respects the rules of law,” he said in a statement issued by his Communications Manager, Mr. Maxwell Adeleye.
He called on all Yoruba people in Nigeria and in the Diaspora to ensure that their ancestral land is not defeated by invaders.
“I received last night the troubling information that Chief Sunday Adeyemo fondly called Igboho had been arrested at the Cotonou Airport,” he noted.
“I and other Yoruba Patriots who are immediately available are now working to provide the assistance necessary to ensure that nobody will be able to do to him anything unlawful or primitive and to prevent him from being extradited into Nigeria which is strongly possible.
“Fortunately, Benin Republic is reliably a land of law where the authorities responsibly obey the law. We have secured the services of a leading and highly respected lawyer whom we can confidently rely on,” he disclosed.
“We know, furthermore, that for the protection of his people who are being brutalized, he has joined hands with many of his brethren to take the legally-appropriate step, namely to seek the intervention of the International Criminal Court.”
