The police in Osun State, South-west Nigeria, have arrested a social media user who made an anti-Igbo tweet.
A statement posted on Twitter by the force spokesperson, Olumuyiwa Adejobi, on Friday said the suspect, Kehinde Adekusibe, 28, was arrested on Thursday by police operatives in the state.
The police quoted the suspect, Mr Adekusibe, as tweeting, “Let’s kill all the Igbos. Let’s flush them out of Yoruba lands. I hate these people with passion. They are violent people. They are the worst. They hate us. Let’s hate them without holding back.”
The police said the Twitter post violated social media policy on hate speech and that the suspect posted the tweet on his handle on 18 May.
The statement said the police, on receipt of information about the Twitter post, immediately drafted police detectives from the Cyber Crime Section of the State Criminal Investigation Department in Osogbo, the state capital.
The detectives, the statement added, quickly swung into action, which led to the suspect’s arrest at Ilesa, where he had hidden.
“The suspect has confessed to the crime, and he will be charged to court after completion of the investigation,” the police said.
“Thanks to Osun State Police Command for its painstaking efforts on this singular case. Kudos. Ire o,” Mr Adejobi, a chief superintendent of police, wrote
Connecting the Dots
During the 2023 general elections, there were clashes between some Yorubas and Igbos in some South-western states, mainly Lagos.
The face-off between the two ethnic groups followed the perceived support of Igbos for the Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate, Peter Obi, against his All Progressives Congress (APC) counterpart, Bola Tinubu, now Nigeria’s president.
While Mr Obi, the LP candidate, hails from Anambra State, an Igbo-speaking part of the South-east, Mr Tinubu is of Yoruba extraction.
Some thugs attacked some Igbos in Lagos, which has a predominantly Yoruba population and destroyed their properties for allegedly voting for Mr Obi during the election.
Although Mr Obi did not win the presidential election, he was declared winner in Lagos State, where Mr Tinubu, the then APC candidate, served as governor between 1999 and 2007.
Mr Obi, like others, subsequently filed a petition at the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal in Abuja to challenge Mr Tinubu’s victory at the election.
In May, when Mr Tinubu’s inauguration as president drew closer, speculations were rife that some unnamed political elites were plotting to thwart the inauguration and usher in “an interim government” after the then President, Muhammadu Buhari, would have exited office on 29 May.
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The people behind the alleged plot were said to have argued that Mr Tinubu could not be sworn in as president while the court case against his election victory had not been decided.
The speculation worsened the face-off between Igbos and Yorubas, with accusations that some Igbos who supported the failed presidential bid of Mr Obi were behind the plot.
