Sunday Adeyemo, popularly known as Sunday Igboho, the Yoruba nation agitator, has explained how he escaped arrest during the raid on his Ibadan home by operatives of the Department of State Services (DSS) in July 2021, saying he never left the house throughout the operation.
Igboho said the operatives searched for him but failed to find him. He also claimed they mistook a cat for him and brought what he described as a “fake herbalist” to perform rituals in an attempt to locate him.
The Yoruba nation activist spoke on Monday while receiving a delegation of Muslim clerics at his residence in Ibadan, Oyo State.
Recounting the incident, Igboho said he was inside the house from the beginning of the operation until the DSS operatives left.
He said: “When they came around 1:30 am. I heard a sound and was inquiring who it was; they started shooting at the room. They heard my voice. When they finally scaled the fence in, they planted a dynamite on the burglary, and everything completely fell apart. That was where they entered. I was naked, but upon hearing their voice, I wore a jean and shirt. One mind was telling me to surrender to them; the other was telling me not to surrender, else I would be killed.
“So at a point, it was looking like I was scared of them; then I immediately yelled, inquiring what had happened and why they had come to pick me up. So they started shooting at close range without even seeing me.
“When they entered and were screaming that I opened the door, they pointed a gun at Dudu (my personal assistant)’s head. And he kept begging me not to shoot while knocking on the door. There, I suspected. They forced the door open. People were even lying that they shot me and I ran away with my intestines out.
“I didn’t turn into a cat. They even killed it, thinking it was me. They even brought a fake herbalist who was just making an incantation and performing a ritual. I was in the house watching them, but they didn’t see me.
“There was this my brother who was partially blind and came out; upon sighting him, they shot him, thinking that he wanted to attack them. They took the corpses away as evidence that they truly invaded my home. So it was God that saved me after a prayer that some Muslim clerics did in my house, forestalling a bad vision they claimed to have seen on me.”
The DSS raided Igboho’s Soka residence in Ibadan in the early hours of July 1, 2021, after months of tension between him and the Federal Government under former President Muhammadu Buhari.
Before the raid, Igboho had attracted national attention after giving an ultimatum to some Fulani residents in parts of Oyo State, accusing them of involvement in kidnappings and other crimes.
He later declared that criminal elements among the Fulani would be driven out of Yorubaland and intensified his campaign for the creation of a sovereign Yoruba Nation.
The Federal Government said some of his activities posed a threat to national security and moved to arrest him.
After the raid, the DSS said it recovered firearms and ammunition from the residence and arrested 13 of Igboho’s associates.
The agency also said two of his aides were killed during what it described as an exchange of gunfire.
Igboho later fled Nigeria and was arrested in Cotonou, Benin Republic, while trying to travel to Germany.
He was later released by the Beninese authorities after months of legal proceedings and has remained in self-imposed exile in the Benin Republic, where he continues to campaign for the Yoruba Nation.