Amotekun must not be subject to Nigeria police control —Yoruba World Congress

The Yoruba World Congress (YWC) at the weekend rejected plans to subject the Western Nigeria Security Network, also known as Amotekun to the control of the Nigeria Police Force.

YWC an umbrella organisation for Yoruba nationals at home and abroad, in a statement signed by its President General, Professor Banji Akintoye on Sunday, titled ‘Yoruba World Congress Supports Akeredolu, Makinde on Amotekun’, said the security outfit must not be subjected to the control of the police.

The statement read 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.

“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.”

It would be recalled that governors of the states in the Southwest geopolitical zone came up with the idea of a security outfit in response to growing attacks in the region by armed robbers, kidnappers and suspected herdsmen.