Amotekun: Proactive response to widening insecurities in Yoruba land ― Olabode George

Former Deputy National Chairman of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Olabode George, said on Friday that the initiative that gave birth to a security outfit code named: Amotekun is largely a necessary and proactive response to the widening insecurity and the seemingly loose banditry, among others, in states of the South-West.

George said this in a statement titled: ‘The Hues and Cries about Amotekun,’ copy of which was made available to newsmen, declaring that the South-West governors took their time to study the situation and did not jump into the fray to establish Operation Amotekun for protection of the region.

“Amotekun, a security outfit established by the six South-West governors is largely a necessary and proactive response to the widening 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 and unreflective in the creation of this self-protective, self-preservative security umbrella across their region,” the PDP chieftain said.

According to George, who is also the Atona of Oodua, the security initiative is a product of over six months deliberations by various stakeholders, including the six state governors “on how best to protect their people who are murdered in their farmlands, savaged on the roads, kidnapped on the fields, cudgelled and ravaged in the sanctity of their private hearths.”

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“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,” Chief George said.

George lamented that the country was already on what he termed the  “very edge of tenterhooks,” warning that the drumbeats of suspicions, the alarm about some secret agenda or the vain recourse to some ethnic-national interests would not augur well for anyone.

While declaring that Amotekun was 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,’ the PDP chieftain called for support of all Yoruba people for Amotekun to enable it to 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.

“Amotekun is not a challenge or a threat to anybody save the wandering marauders, the murderous goon-squad and all kinds of assorted outlaws whose actions make the Nigerian Union itself vulnerable and wobbly. We should all support Amotekun in that pristine design as a deterrent to outlaws roaming Yorubaland,” Chief George said.