The Yoruba Appraisal Forum (YAF) has called on South-West governors to stop the recently launched Amotekun security agency bill and go back to the drawing board.
YAF, in a peaceful rally in Lagos yesterday, described Amotekun as a monster that would soon consume its creators.
A spokesman for YAF Oloketuyi Joshua Ojo said: “Those who set up the outfit had good intentions, but the idea will soon be hijacked by politicians and land-grabbers. Amotekun was a noble one, as they set out to protect the people of the region against criminal elements causing wanton destruction of life and property. The idea has been hijacked and is now intended for purposes that could be injurious to the continued corporate existence of Nigeria. We have uncovered plans to use Amotekun to destabilize the South-West and, ultimately, the entire country.
“Amotekun has been hijacked by those who don’t mean well for Yorubaland and the country at large. They plan to hide under the guise of providing security to cause mayhem in the country.”
The group’s leader stressed that the promoters of the idea who sold it to the South-West governors and innocent people of the region who see it as a new force to provide them adequate security against the activities of criminal elements, since the police seem overwhelmed by the security challenges across the country, “have through devious means, subtle and outright naked threat, taken over Amotekun for the purpose of achieving their selfish agenda of dismembering Nigeria, in collaboration with their foreign sponsors and the indications to this, are very clear.”
“Unfortunately, the South-West governors are ignorant, throwing their weight and resources behind a security outfit whose real motive they are not aware of,”
he said.
Ojo recalled that the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Maleml, Prof. Ishaq Akintola, Balarabe Musa, former governor of old Kaduna State, and others warned about the dangers inherent in the establishment of the South-West security initiative.
“We make bold to say that the reality is that Amotekun is an instrument to perpetrate crime and make political gains for a few individuals masquerading as having the love of the people of the region at heart,
” the YAF said, adding, “Our concern here is that, if Amotekun is not stopped now, the Nigerian nation may not even live to regret the creation of this leopard in whose belly it may end up. God forbid!”
According to Ojo, “The indications are clear enough to discern that Amotekun will eventually become a Frankenstein monster that the country won’t be able to control. Having another rebellion from the South-West would be one crisis too many for a country still struggling to combat the Boko Haram insurgency in the North-East, banditry and cattle rustling in the North-West and North-Central as well as militancy in the South-South.
“The plan is that, once Amotekun gains foothold in the region, the new promoters and their foreign sponsors will show their real colours, their real intention, by hounding other ethnic groups in the South-West in the name of providing security in the region, and in the process embark on a sort of ethnic cleansing and ultimately expelling other Nigerians from Yorubaland through force and violence, the backlash of which will be retaliation in the other regions.”
