Amotekun: We don’t want collision with FG —Northern governors

Northern governors have said that they prefer community policing to the Operation Amotekun model of their South West counterparts which has pitched them against federal authorities.

Governor of Plateau State and chairman of the Northern Governors’ Forum Simon Lalong, made this known on Friday in Abuja while addressing journalists.

Lalong, who is also the co-chairman of the Progressives Governors Forum (PGF) Governance Programme Steering Committee, spoke with the press at the end of the first quarterly meeting of the committee for 2020.

He said governors on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) were concerned about measures to address the general insecurity in the country.

“In general terms, what we did after presentations from security agencies is, all of us appear to be talking about community policing. That one we have all agreed on so we don’t want a situation where you start doing something and the Federal Government will say you are doing outside the law just like what they said about Amotekun.

“It is now that they are going to dialogue. Even if they are doing that it has to be within the law. So, what is within the law as far as Governors are concerned is the issue of community policing. We have all agreed on that.

‘’Our duty is restricted to policy formulation. Ours is to design good policies for implementation by APC states and part of those policy issues is Amotekun. We are not talking about Amotekun but general insecurity.

‘’Once we lay the policy before all APC states and it is approved, we will begin to talk about how to go about it. At the level of approval, people might bring out Amotekun or other names and issues.

“I always try not to talk about what the zones are talking about because I am not from that zone. I am the chairman of Northern Governors Forum who also has a different opinion from what obtains there. What we are laying down now as a framework includes the general security because we are not unmindful of what is going on in the country.

“That is why every year, we sit down and draw up a framework and we tell them, these are the things that are current and things that APC governors should absorb in terms of preparing their budget and also in terms of the governance in their states.”

Lalong’s Jigawa state counterpart, Mohammed Badaru Abubakar, told newsmen that the Federal Government was on top of the security situation in the country.

He disclosed that the larger forum of the 36 state governors, the Nigerian Governors Forum, has a standing committee that is collaborating with the Federal Government to curtail the security menace.

“On the security situation, I believe there is a standing committee that is looking at security. That involves not only APC governors but all governors in the federation,” he said.