A youth group, Yoruba Appraisal Forum on Tuesday, 17 March, 2020, carried its opposition to the formation of the Western Nigerian Security Network codenamed operation Amotekun to Ado-Ekiti, the Ekiti State capital with a call for the scrapping of the outfit.
The group had earlier staged a peaceful protest in Lagos last week and its decision to storm Ekiti according to its Coordinator, Mr. Shina Animashaun was borne out of the need to sensitise the people of the region on the inherent dangers of allowing the governors to continue with the programme.
Animashaun spoke to journalists at Ajilosun area of Ado-Ekiti on Tuesday, Animashaun in the midst of other members who carried some placards with inscription ‘Amotekun Will Turn Our Youths to Militia Group’, ‘Amotekun Motive, Shine Your Eyes’, ‘Amotekun Can Bring Proliferation of Arms’, among others.
Articulating the grouse of YAF, he stated that though the project was a laudable one if properly implemented but that it has been hijacked by so-unnamed politicians whom he alleged were nursing political ambition in 2023.
According to him, his group has discovered plot to use Amotekun to destabilize the southwest and the entire country in 2023 by the unnamed politicians.
“We call on President Buhari to use his good office to call the southwest governors to order by prevailing on them not to sign the Amotekun bills into laws yet until proper checks about such security are done.
“We call on President Buhari to use his good office to call the South-west governors to order by prevailing on them not to sign the Amotekun bills into laws yet, until proper checks about such security outfit are done,” he said.
The group faulted the hurried manners at which the governors conducted the public hearings on the bills setting up the programme in their respective states, saying: “It ought to have been done senatorially rather than bringing a few people to the state capitals to contribute in a programme that lasted for 30 minutes.
“The South-west governors should be dissuaded from innocently equipping and funding a security outfit that some unscrupulous and wicked individuals have planned to use against the same people the governors have sworn to protect.
“The governors should be made to realise that they should not allow themselves to be railroaded into taking an action they will regret later.
“The nation’s security agencies like the police, National Intelligence Agency, Defence Intelligence Agency, Department of State Services (DSS) and others need to profile the current promoters of Amotekun security outfit with a view to ascertaining its real membership and their original intention.”
The group urged the handlers to take note of the warnings issued by Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami; former Kaduna State Government, Balarabe Musa, the Miyetti Allah Kautal Hore and others about the hazards inherent in Amotekun
