Charly Boy, popular musician and leader of the #OurMumuDonDo protest, would have been lynched on Tuesday when he visited Wuse market, Abuja, but for the intervention of Igbo traders.

Charly Boy, whose real name is Charles Oputa, has been protesting against President Muhammadu Buhari’s continued stay in London on medical vacation for the past 100 days.

It is exactly unclear why he went to the market but his small group of protesters had been outnumbered by the much larger pro-Buhari group that also gathered at the Unity Fountain.

A witness who spoke with the ICIR said Charly Boy was already a known face at the market by both Hausa and Igbo traders.

“He often visited and would give us money from time to time,” the trader, who asked not to be named, said.

“But because he had been leading a protest against Buhari, many of the Hausa suddenly started to dislike him. They attacked him today.”

He said were it not for Igbo traders who trooped to the scene of the attack in defence of one of their own, ‘Area Father’, as he is fondly called, might have been lynched.

“The Igbo traders saved him,” he said. “Without them, something terrible would have happened to him, because even the traffic wardens around here all ran away when the trouble started, saying they didn’t have guns”.

The police subsequently intervened in restoring peace to the area and the market was shut down.