NDF demands Amosun’s probe over alleged arms surrender

The National Democratic Front (NDF) has called for the immediate arrest of former Governor of Ogun State, Senator Ibikunle Amosun, for possession of arms.

Revelation emerged recently that few hours to the end of his reign as Ogun State helmsman, embattled Governor Ibikunle Amosun contacted the state’s Commissioner of Police, Bashir Makama, confessing that he had thousands of arms and millions of ammunition in store at a secret armoury in Government House, and that he had decided to hand them over to the police.

But the former governor has since revealed that there was no transfer of weapons on the said date, 28 May, 2019.

The group specifically called on other governors to turn in their weapons for their own good.

The statement reads in full.

Gentlemen of the press, it has been more than 24 hours since Nigerians were first greeted by the news that the immediate past governor of Ogun State, Senator Ibikunle Amosun, surrendered 1000 automatic assault rifles and 4 million rounds of ammunition to the state’s commissioner of police shortly before he left office.

Permit us to digress a little to put this development in the proper context and perspective. According to the Nigeria Police Force, Ogun State has 7,107 police officers. Although the inventory of the Police is not made public, it is safe to extrapolate that there should be about one AK47 rifle for other seven police officers. The implication, if it is true, is that Amosun’s armoury effectively had more firearms than the Ogun State Police Command and at least 10 times more ammunition than the command has in its inventory.

The National Democratic Front (NDF) is eager for the federal government to get to the bottom of the weapon cache found with Amosun. It is pertinent to find out how he was able to ship such large consignment into the country without being found out.

The investigation must unveil the extent of collusion in the Nigeria Police, Department of State Services (DSS) and Nigerian Custom Service if any. It is not likely that such large consignment could have been ferried around without the knowledge of these law enforcement agents. Where they are able to prove that they were unaware then a case of dereliction of duty must be opened against them.

We are concerned that for Amosun to have kept an inventory of 1000 rifles and 4,000,000 bullets, a larger number of the hardware would have fallen into the wrong hands. This explains the proliferation of light weapons that are in part responsible for the security breaches across the country. It is necessary to verify how much of these weapons he originally ordered for shipping into the country and how many of them he lost in transit, how many he has issued out prior to the election and the people he gave the weapons to.

With this development, NDF has been vindicated in its earlier insistence that serving and former governors are responsible for the current widespread insecurity in the country and that dealing with them is the key to restoring security to the country. They unleashed this hardship on the country in their desperation to cling onto power or to ensure that they continue ruling their respective states by installing proxies as successors.

This is why we believe that the discovery in Ogun state is nothing but the tip of the iceberg. More confounding revelations await the nation once the bold step is taken to investigate sources of weapons that are being used to torment Nigerians across the land.

NDF is, therefore, demanding that the Federal Government immediately order that Senator Ibikunle Amosun be taken into custody for further investigation. The federal government must expand the investigation to include other states where the governors or former governors have been named as sponsoring militias or militants while such individuals are asked to surrender all the arms and ammunition in their warehouses and armouries.