Ibadan stampede: Court remands ex-Queen, Hamzat, Principal

• PFN commiserates with Tinubu, Makinde, Soludo, seeks preventive measures
• Akintoye condoles victims’ families, says dehumanising fundamentals demand courageous change

A Chief Magistrate’s Court sitting in Iyaganku, Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, yesterday, ordered the remand of the Principal of Islamic High School, Bashorun in Ibadan, Abdullahi Fasasi; the Proprietor of Agidigbo FM, Oriyomi Hamzat, and Naomi Silekunola, an estranged wife of the Ooni of Ife, Oba Enitan Adeyeye Ogunwusi, at Agodi Correctional Centre.

The court, presided over by Chief Magistrate Olabisi Ogunkanmi, remanded the three defendants on a four-count charge bordering on conspiracy and murder in connection with the children’s funfair stampede in Ibadan last Wednesday.

The three defendants, who pleaded not guilty to the charges, were arraigned amid heavy security in the premises of the court filled with relatives of the defendants and other interested parties.

The police prosecutor argued that the offence committed by the defendants was contrary to Section 324 of the Criminal Code, Cap. 38, Vol. II, Laws of Oyo State of Nigeria, 2000.

Ogunkanmi, who ordered that the suspects be kept at Agodi Correctional Centre pending advice from the state prosecutor, adjourned the case till January 14, 2025.

MEANWHILE, the National President of the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN), Bishop Francis Wale Oke, has commiserated with President Bola Tinubu over the death of innocent Nigerians who died as a result of stampedes that occurred across the country. He also sent his condolences to the Governor of Oyo State, Seyi Makinde and the Governor of Anambra State, Chukwuma Soludo.

In a statement issued by the media bureau of the PFN, Oke extended the heartfelt condolences of all the leaders and members of PFN across Nigeria to President Tinubu, the governors and in particular to the families whose loved ones lost their lives during the unfortunate stampedes across the country.

Oke, while lamenting that the stampedes occurred when the victims were trying to receive palliatives distributed to the less privileged by private organisers, said that the stampedes were pointers to the fact that there was serious hunger in the land.

HOWEVER, a Yoruba leader, Prof. Banji Akintoye, has commiserated with the families of the victims of the Ibadan Christmas funfair tragedy and stampedes in other parts of the country, saying it is time for change.

Akintoye, who stated this on behalf of the Yoruba self-determination struggle in a statement made available to The Guardian in Ibadan, titled: “The Tragic Stampedes In Ibadan And Other Places In Nigeria: Time For Change,” said Nigeria’s disastrous and dehumanising fundamentals demanded courageous change, adding that courageous men and women must make the change happen.

Akintoye said that the poverty had created a vicious desperation for basic necessities of life that if anybody is offered anything now in the nature of gifts, such as food gifts, an unexpectedly large number of people would most certainly show up for the gifts and then engage in deadly stampedes to reach the gifts.

He maintained that this kind of tragedy underscored the need for a deeper, more responsive, more humane, more statesmanlike, and final solution to the manifest fall of Nigeria by leaders of Nigeria, particularly political leaders.

The professor of History lamented that Nigeria had sunk to the lowest levels of degradation in the world and had become an ultra-barbaric country in which nothing works and nothing can work.