Dr Frederick Fasehun is the founder and national leader of the Yoruba self-determination militant group, Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC). He told KAMAL TAYO OROPO that the state of emergency declared recently by the Federal Government is consequent on the spate of bombings and insecurity in the country.What is your reaction to the emergency declaration; is it in order'WELL, I will like to think it is in order, considering the number of lives that have been lost in these areas. It has become necessary to put an end to the destruction of lives (especially) and properties. And in any case I was also made to believe that as soon as the situation normalizes, the emergency declaration would be lifted.Questions are raised as to why the declaration affected only selected Local Government Areas and not the entire state'Nigeria is a very big country, but it is also politically unstable. So, government must calculate before taking any major decision like declaration of a state emergency in any part of the country.Against this backdrop, I think the selective declaration will be better than total declaration of emergency in areas suspected to be unruly.Shouldn't traditional rulers in communities where criminal gangs operate be made to account for deeds of their subjects'My take is that it looks like the government is being careful because of the volatile situation in the country. Of course, there are various constraints and government apparently doesn't want to bite more than it can chew. So I think they (government) are being very careful on how to manage the situation.We have the coalition of ethnic nationalities not too long ago and we spelt out some of these things. We thought at that time that government would make use of some of our suggestions. However, I think there is another meeting of the coalition of ethnic nationalities, which will consist of about 52 ethnics nationalities in the country, the major ones. We are looking again that the government will listen.But like we have always insisted, government should prescribe a national conference, where all these evils will be tabled and solution proffered.How are you able to make the OPC relevant at times like this'First and foremost, the philosophy behind the formation of OPC is not just to flex muscles in market places. We have education as one aspect of our philosophy. We also have agriculture, employment for graduate and non-graduate. We are taking these programmes one at a time. We have long evolved from flexing of muscles in market places. We are in the second stage of our programmes, which is education. The third is employment. We have achieved what we wanted in the defence of the Yoruba people, so we are steadily moving on to other features.It is not just militarising ourselves alone that forms our philosophy. It is a packaged. OPC philosophy consists of a package and we are introducing the content of the package bit by bit. Efforts at demilitarisation of the group were not necessarily so difficult, especially when you consider the philosophy, which forms the basis of the organisation's foundation.
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