Ile-Ife residents
EKO HOT BLOG reports that the residents of Ile-Ife concerned by the escalating violence perpetrated by suspected Modakeke natives have reached out to Nigerian authorities in a desperate plea for intervention.
Characterizing the situation as a nightmarish ordeal, they emphasized the urgent need for action, warning that failure to address the issue may lead to retaliatory measures from the typically peace-loving and law-abiding Ife community.
In a statement issued by Prince Ademuyiwa Adeniran, Chairman of the Ife Intellectuals, and signed by group Secretary Comrade Kolawole Jimoh Oladipo, the indigenes highlighted the dire circumstances faced by their community.
They emphasized the relentless onslaught of attacks and killings perpetrated by bandits suspected to be Modakeke natives, painting a harrowing picture of the ongoing crisis.
“The latest round of wanton killings of an Ife chief and two others, with two more persons feared killed (but corpses not found yet), allegedly carried out by Modakeke bandits is the height of the incessant attacks on both the persons and properties of the Ife people,” the Ile-Ife natives stated.
“The situation is so tense presently that there is the need for the trigger-happy and machete-wielding suspected Modakeke trouble seekers to be checked.
“The following are instances of the murderous and thieving activities of these marauders that the peace-loving and law-abiding Ife people have endured till now:
“Modakeke has forcefully taken over nothing less than one hundred Ife villages in recent times by terrorizing, killing, maiming and kidnapping the ancestral owners of those farmlands and thereby scaring the survivors out of the villages.
“This unchecked affront of the Modakeke bandits gave them the insolent audacity to launch further attacks on Toro, Yekere and Alape villages and to illegally annex and rename same as belonging to Modakeke in successive order between October and December, 2023.
“The village heads and royal highnesses of groups of villages installed/crowned by the Ooni, including Olu of Toro and Oloyere of Oyere, were sacked from their ancestral domains of authority.
“All attempts by the ancestral owners of those farmlands to lawfully re-possess them with the police who have at various times accompanied them there to enforce court judgements have been flagrantly and forcefully resisted by the Modakeke miscreants who have illegally taken possession of the farms cultivated and nurtured by Ife farmers.
“The gruesome murder of Chief Adesoji Adedire of Wanisanni village and two others, with two more persons missing till now, along that axis on Tuesday March 19, 2024 is the latest in the Modakeke’s acts of aggression against Ife. Chief Adedire was not merely killed, but his two arms were chopped off and carted away apparently for ritual purposes.
“Such a dastardly act! Oftentimes when the Modakeke killers and pillagers have carried out their nefarious acts, they are the ones that would rush to the public claiming that Ife is maltreating and killing them, like it happened about three years ago at Toro.
“They are the aggressors and they play the victims at the same time, thereby painting Ife natives as a set of evil and hostile people. As they play out their separatist and expansionist agenda in the farmlands of Ife, so they do in Ile-Ife township.
“Modakeke as a community was resettled on a defined space within Ile-Ife on their return in 1922 during the reign of Ooni Ademiluyi Ajagun after they were dispersed in 1909. They were resettled not as a separate town, but an integral part of Ile-Ife. This was reasserted in the Bode George panel’s 11-point Ife-Modakeke crisis settlement document of the year 2000.
“Apart from Modakeke sticking to their gun on being a separate town from Ife, they have gone on clandestine Ife streets renaming as Modakeke.
This is obvious on IBEDC bills with regard to places like Lagere, Akarabata, Ijedu, Urban-Day Grammar School area, Aderemi Road, Isale-Agbara, just to mention but a few.
“As part of measures to consolidate this land-grabbing agenda, a new market was established at Akarabata on Saturday 23rd March by the Modakeke people named ‘Arowolo Market, Akarabata, Modakeke’ in an area with an Ife Baale installed by the Ooni.
“This is clearly the rebellious agenda of Ogunsua Toriola playing out. Prior to his emergence as Ogunsua, the then Chief Toriola had offered as his own ‘solution’ to the Ife-Modakeke perennial crisis that for peace to reign, Ife must accept that everything to the right coming into Ile-Ife from Oduduwa University roundabout along Ife-Ibadan express way is Modakeke and whatever is to the left is Ile-Ife. All the places being illegally renamed as Modakeke are on the said right side of the road, including Ife Central Local Government secretariat.”
Ile-Ife residents
Prince Ademuyiwa, acknowledging the stealthy nature of the leopard as not an act of cowardice, cautioned that the alleged invaders’ propensity for violence should not be mistaken for superiority.
He warned that continued inhumane treatment could compel the Ife indigenes to defend themselves if pushed to the brink.
There is no love lost between the indigenes of Ile-Ife and Moradeke.
Historians have described the crisis between both towns as one of the oldest intra-ethnic conflicts in Nigeria.
Seven major violent clashes have been recorded between them in 1835-1849, 1882-1909, 1946- 1949, 1981, 1983, 1997-1998, and 2000.
The causes include cultural identity, economics and politics as reflected in land ownership, payment of land rent (Isakole), creation of local government and location of its headquarters.
The latest war between Ile-Ife and Modakeke involved killings and destruction of properties, lasting from 1998 until 2000, when the then president, Olusegun Obasanjo, set up a committee, led by Olabode George, to look into the intra-communal crisis.
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