The Yoruba World Congress (YWC) has thrown its support behind the insistence of the Southwest governors not to subsume the Southwest security outfit codenamed Amotekun under the Nigerian Police.
In a statement signed by the leader of the group, Professor Banji Akintoye, YWC praised the courage of Governors Akeredolu and Makinde for standing firm. The full statement below :
The Yoruba World Congress, an umbrella organization for Yoruba nationals at home and abroad, met and decided as follows:
We support and reinforce the stand of Governor Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo State and his Oyo State counterpart, Governor Seyi Makinde, 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 clamour for Amotekun by the generality of our people. It makes no sense, therefore, to put the same Amotekun under an organisation 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 clamour 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, courage and principled stand 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 in any form and under any guise.
We, therefore, call on those trying to toy with Amotekun to desist forthwith.
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 and or multi-layer security system is an idea whose time has come.
Trying to prevent it is like swimming against the tide with dire consequences.
SIGNED:
Prof. Banji Akintoye
President,
Yoruba World Congress
