Amotekun: Group cautions S/West govs against endangering Yorubas
A civil society group known as Societal Safety Network (SSN) has cautioned the South West governors not to endanger the lives of persons of Yoruba extract living in other part of the country with the newly launched security outfit , code named “Amotekun”.
Executive Director of SSN, Ambassador Abdulrahman Agboola at a press conference in Abuja, Wednesday cautioned that security issues should not be politicized.
He said Yorubas living in other parts of the country are at risk should the security outfit be misconstrued as serving ethnic interest.
The executive director said “we respect the ideals of the Developmental Agenda of Western Nigerian and commend their progressive action plan on the economy of the South West, Nigeria but we seriously frown at the hurried nature without considering the plight of Yoruba living in the North on two grounds.
“We fear that if the Amotekun is misunderstood as targeting a particular ethnic group, as this expose Yorubas living in other parts of the Country to dangers, with predicted reprisal attacks as history recorded during past ethnic clashes.
“The country doesn’t currently operate a regional government and the declaration of a regional security outfit is an aberration that should ordinarily attract stoppage of security votes by the Federal Government and except individual States begin to display prove of judicious usage of the security votes, the present circumstances could remain unabated”.
Advising the governors, ,Ambassador Agboola said ” those with good sense of history can easily understand the nexus between current conspiracies against conventional security agencies and innuendos of ethnic militia formations.
The separate security votes of Governors can purchase helicopters for aerial surveillance and empower conventional security agencies to undertake minute to minute security patrol of highways to curb crimes, especially kidnapping and banditry in their respective states.
“We urge the Governors to use the platform of Nigeria Governors Forum to facilitate nexus among themselves to tame insecurity wholesomely, if they can facilitate improved funding and personnel increase for the Nigeria Police Force, the situation can definitely be better.
“Ordinarily, there is nothing legally or morally wrong in state governments setting up legally backed unconventional security apparatus to assist the conventional security network in situations of high powered security flaws but when such actions become suspicious, it deserves serious admonitions”.
He continued “despite unrelenting efforts by the security agencies to curb and prevent crimes in Nigeria, the unwarranted breakdown of laws and orders has remained alarming due to the low size of personnel in internal security.
The reality of Nigeria situation clearly depict that the Nigeria decurity agencies seems to have been outweighed by unimaginable population of criminals.
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“If the Nigeria Police Force will still be the agency to detain and prosecute arrested culprits, the best action for the Governors is to properly liase with the Police formations to achieve the desired result and fight crimes in it’s entirety and shun any act of compromise. The major crimes can be fought to a standstil, if there is enhanced funding of security operatives.
“All law abiding citizens should enjoy security anywhere in the country and we are scared of ethnic profiling under guise, criminals are criminals and should be treated as criminals”.
