The Oodua People’s Congress (OPC) has issued a fierce, uncompromising warning to bandits and criminal syndicates operating in the Southwest, declaring that the recent wave of beheadings, killings, and kidnappings across Yorubaland will no longer be tolerated.
The pan-Yoruba socio-cultural and security group broke its silence following the horrific escalation of the weekend school abduction in Oriire Local Government Area of Oyo State. Outrage peaked across the region following grim confirmations that the fleeing bandits ruthlessly beheaded an abducted teacher and that a two-year-old toddler was among the 46 vulnerable victims dragged into the forest grids bordering Kwara State and the Old Oyo National Park.
In a strongly worded national statement issued on Wednesday, May 20, 2026, the OPC leadership condemned the attack as an “avoidable tragedy” and a direct, open insult to the collective security of the Yoruba people. The group stated that it had long warned political leaders that hostile non-state actors were quietly encircling Southwest forests while governors played politics with regional defense. Describing the present situation as a total siege on ancestral lands, the congress announced that its patience has reached a final breaking point.
Rather than remaining on the sidelines, the OPC directed a sharp, urgent appeal to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the Southwest governors: equip us to confront these perpetrators directly. The group argued that the heavily centralized federal security architecture has proven entirely inadequate at policing the dense, treacherous terrains of the Oyo-Kwara border corridors. They maintained that if given the official state backing and logistical resources, their deep-rooted grassroots intelligence networks and bush-craft operators would root out the terrorists from the forests within days, vowing that the blood of the slain teacher will be the catalyst for total resistance against foreign incursions in the region.
