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Former National Vice Chairman Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) and a retired Navy Commodore, Chief Olabode George, has described the recently launched Western Nigeria Security Network, codenamed Operation Amotekun, as a necessary and proactive response to the worsening insecurity marked by banditry, kidnapping and other crimes in the South West.
George stated in a statement personally signed by him, that the South West governors took their time to study the situation and did not jump into the fray to establish Operation Amotekun.
“Amotekun, a security outfit established by the six South West governors, is largely a necessary and proactive response to the worsening insecurity, the seemingly loose banditry and the marauding licentiousness that have ravaged virtually all parts of Yorubaland.
“The governors did not jump into the fray in some hurried unreflection in the creation of this self-protective, self-preservation security umbrella across their region,” the PDP chieftain said.
The retired naval officer, who is also the Atona of Oodua, said the security initiative is a product of over six months of deliberations by various stakeholders, including the governors on how best to protect their people “who are murdered in their farmlands, savaged on the roads, kidnapped on the fields, cudgeled and ravaged in the sanctity of their private hearths.”
According to him, “Indeed, Amotekun is not some unthoughtful fancy of the governors trying to create a nebulous counterforce to the existing security structure as some uninformed would put it. It is largely to enhance and strengthen the subsisting law enforcement agencies as it is already well established in most parts of the North.”
He stated that Amotekun is not a challenge or a threat to anybody in the country but “the wandering marauders, the kidnappers, the bandits and all criminal elements whose actions make the Nigerian Union itself vulnerable and wobbly.”
George called on the people of the region to support Amotekun so as to enable it curtail the activities of the “outlaws roaming Yorubaland.”
“Our nation is already on the very edge of tenterhooks. The drumbeats of suspicions, the vile alarm about some secret agenda or the vain recourse to some ethnic national appropriation do not augur well for anyone,” he added.