When anti-Amotekun protest rocked Ekiti, Lagos

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Cross section of an anti-Amotekun protest during the Ekiti rally.

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A group of youths, early in the week precisely Tuesday March 17, 2020, protested in Ado Ekiti, the Ekiti State capital, against the formation of the Western Nigerian Security Network, codenamed Operation Amotekun.

This came six days after another protest by another Yoruba group, led by Oloketuyi Joshua, took place in Lagos.

The Ekiti group, which called itself ‘Yoruba Appraisal Forum’, described Amotekun as a political tool, saying the security outfit in the region should be scrapped across the six states of Ekiti, Oyo, Osun, Lagos, Ondo and Ogun states to “avoid future calamity.”

The body claimed to have uncovered a plot by some political leaders to use Amotekun to destabilize the Southwest and ultimately the entire country in 2023.

It expressed fear that the entire Yoruba race would be endangered in 2023 with the existence of Amotekun and predicted that the network would be hijacked by politicians for “some sinister purposes” in elections.

The protesters carried placards with inscriptions like, ‘Amotekun Will Turn our Youths to Militia Group’, ‘Amotekun Motive, Shine Your Eyes’ and ‘Amotekun Can Bring Proliferation of Arms’.

Addressing newsmen in the Ajilosun area where the protest was held, the group’s coordinator, Mr Adeshina Animashaun, regarded the Amotekun project as a laudable one but insisted it has been hijacked by those he described as nursing political ambitions in 2023.

Animashaun appealed to President Muhammadu Buhari to rejig the country’s security architecture to prevent “a resurgence of militia groups with tendencies to pose dangers to the lives of the people.”

He added, “The southwest 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 realize that they should not allow themselves to be railroaded into taking an action they will regret later.”

The Lagos protest

The last week anti-Amotekun protest in Lagos was held also by a coalition of Yoruba groups, under the aegis of the Yoruba Appraisal Forum, which raised the alarm of hijack of the recently-launched South-West Security Outfit, code-named Amotekun, by some individuals bent on deploying it for sinister purposes.

The forum, therefore, urged South-West governors to stop the security outfit and go back to the drawing board.YAF, at a peaceful rally in front of Lagos State Police Command yesterday, described Amotekun as a monster that would soon consumed its creator.

Its spokesman, Oloketuyi Joshua Ojo, said: “Those who set up the outfit had good intention, 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 lives and property, the idea has been hijacked and now intended for purposes that could be injurious to the continued corporate existence of Nigeria.

We have uncovered plans to use Amotekun to destabilise 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.”

Ojo, who said that the dangers inherent in the establishment of the South-West security initiative could not be quantified, said: “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.

“Our concern here is that if Amotekun is not stopped now, the nation may not even live to regret the creation of this leopard in whose belly it may end up. God forbid!

“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 areas 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 now show their real colours and 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.”

Meanwhile, Ojo had while addressing journalists in Lagos yesterday before the scheduled protest at the police command, said while the Yoruba Appraisal Forum lauds the good intention of the governors that came together to form Amotekun for the interest of their people, it could not be ruled out that some sycophants have come together to divert the good intention of the initiators with a view to using the initiative for their own selfish interest or purpose.

He stressed that to subjugate the nefarious intention of the hijackers, there is need to come up with blue-prints of recruitment of members of the outfit, the inclusion of every local council, moving gradually, and carrying every citizen along.


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