Amotekun Would Not Be Under Police Who Can’t Protect Lives – Akintoye

The Yoruba World Congress, an umbrella organisation for Yoruba nationals at home and abroad, has in a statement made available to newsmen on Sunday, August 30 backed Governor Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo State and Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State over the independent of Amotekun.

According to the statement titled, ‘Yoruba World Congress supports Akeredolu, Makinde on Amotekun’, signed by the group’s President General, Prof. Banji Akintoye, the Western Nigeria Security Outfit popularly known as ‘Operation Amotekun’ will not be placed under the control of the Nigeria Police Force who has failed in protecting lives and properties of the citizens.

The YWC noted that it stands with the two governors who have declared also their position with the involvement of the NPF over the local security outfit.

YWC statement reads in part, “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 South-West region that led to the clamour for Amotekun by the generality of our people.

YWC noted that putting Amotekun under the Nigerian security agency will only weaken it and sabotage the reason for its establishment. The group called on Yorubas that are home and abroad to speak out against any effort trying to muffle the security outfit.

The statement added, “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 Nigeria Police hierarchy is a ploy to weaken it and sabotage the strident clamour of the people of the South-West for peace and security in their homeland.”

“It must be noted that the entire South-West 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 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.”