Yoruba Congress rejects FG’s plan to put Amotekun under police
The Yoruba World Congress has said it does not agree with the decision to subsume the Amotekun security outfit under the Nigerian police.
This is coming after the Federal government said it was going to place the South-West security outfit under the police.
Reacting to this, the group expressed its support for Governor Rotimi Akeredolu, SAN, of Ondo State and Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State on the decision not to put the regional security outfit, Amotekun, under the control of the Inspector General of Police, saying the body should not be subsumed under the police.
In a statement on Saturday by the President General, Prof. Banji Akintoye, the group said the decision by the governors was in the right direction.
“The Yoruba World Congress, an umbrella organization for Yoruba nationals at home and abroad, met and decided as follows:
“We support the stand of Governor Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo State and Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State that the Southwest security outfit codenamed Amotekun shall not be subsumed under the control of the Nigeria Police Force.
“Amotekun, as rightly posited by the governors, is an independent security outfit necessitated by the clear danger of murderous herdsmen internationally accepted as terrorists, heartless bandits and sundry criminals who have turned Yorubaland into killing fields.
“It was also the failure of the existing security architecture to tackle the menace and secure life and property in the Southwest region that led to the clamor for Amotekun by the generality of our people.
“It makes no sense, therefore, to put the same Amotekun under an organization that has proved incapable and inadequate to provide the much-needed security in the first place.
“Putting Amotekun under the Nigerian Police hierarchy is a ploy to weaken it and sabotage the strident clamor of the people of the Southwest for peace and security in their homeland.
“It must be noted that the entire Southwest rose like one man to demand and support Amotekun and to resist all efforts to truncate its birth.
“We, therefore, see the efforts to twist the hands of Yoruba governors to whittle down Amotekun as a continuation of the same ploy to abort this regional security outfit.
“We salute the stance of Governors Akeredolu and Makinde on the independence of Amotekun and call on other Southwest governors to follow suit.
“We also call on all Yoruba sons and daughters at home and abroad to stand up in support of Amotekun and speak out against efforts or plans to muffle it.
“We demand that the security of the Southwest must not be compromised. “We, therefore, call on those trying to toy with Amotekun to desist henceforth.” “We have the inalienable right to security of life and property.
“We, therefore, stand solidly with the Southwest governors as they strive to protect life and property.
“As a federation, different layers of security outfits should collaborate, rather than one outfit trying to prevent the others from contributing their own quota.
The Nigerian constitution supports supplementary security outfits as has been the case in parts of Northern Nigeria.
“The central policing system has failed. Community security is an idea whose time has come.
Nwada Ugochinyere Onyechere reporting, Obinwannem News