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The governorship candidate of Alliance for Democracy (AD) in the March 9, 2019 governorship election in Oyo State, Engineer Hakeem Alao has commended the governors of the six South West states for setting up Amotekun for the security of lives and property in the region. He however stated that the governors need to draw up other plans in order to cement the gains of Amotekun.
In a statement issued on Wednesday, Alao stated that the governors would complement the work of Amotekun by focusing on food production and industrial revolution.
“The present governors in the South West would do well in securing our people if they could go to the drawing board to come up with short and long term plans that would secure the geopolitical zone socio-economically through aggressive food production and sufficiency, techno-scientific and industrial revolution to open up our local talents and industries,” he said.
Reacting to the declaration of the Minister of Justice, Mr. Abubakar Malami, that Amotekun was illegal, Alao maintained that the fact that security is exclusively a statutory function of the federal government, does not mean state governors should sit back and do noting to secure their region where federal structures fail.
His words: “Although the issue of security is exclusively a statutory function of the federal government considering how our federalism is structured, the south west governors have a duty to protect the lives and property of their people in a situation where the federal government has not performed as expected; in a period where everybody becomes victims of insecurity, particularly in the hands of strangers, and where the regular police have not been able to adequately secure our people.
“Considering the security threats and all forms of criminal activities going on across the country, particularly in Yoruba land, alien to us as a race, and have proved difficult to nip in the bud, which is a complete failure on the part of the federal government, no true son of the Yoruba race would go against the formation of the Western Nigerian Security Network (WNSN), Amotekun, as has been described by Dr Kayode Fayemi, the Governor of Ekiti State and Chairman of the Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF), as a confidence building security strategy pending the time community policing will be put in place by the Nigeria Police.
“So, Amotekun has been put together and unveiled publicly by the South West governors. It is surprising to hear the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr Abubakar Malami, declaring it as illegal. It is appalling at this time to declare the outfit illegal by an official of the federal government. It is believed that the governors had taken all necessary steps before the public launch of the security apparatus on Thursday, 9 January, 2020, which they had been working on for the past six months. Why is the outfit being declared illegal all of a sudden?
“All things being equal, the federal government might have a good ground, sentiments apart, to nurse fear about the possibility of threat to the unified national security system of the country which may play out when other geopolitical zones start to establish a similar security outfit, which in the overall, might threaten the continued existence of the country. Perhaps the formation of Amotekun would have been taken through the enactment of the state and national assembly. Above all, a collective fight for true federalism would have been intensified to decentralize the security system of the country, particularly policing, so as not to run against the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, which our governors have sworn to protect, in the effort to serve our people. A wrong will never make another wrong right.”
The former governorship hopeful in his statement also commiserated with the people of Oyo town and the Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Olayiwola Adeyemi, over the unfortunate fire disaster that razed down the ancient Akesan market on Friday, January 3, 2020.
“I commiserate with those who recorded a huge loss in the inferno and pray that God will resettle them back into life in manifolds”, he concluded.
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