The Yoruba Leadership and Peace Initiative (TYLPI) yesterday criticised the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, of unduly overheating the polity over the recently launched Western Nigeria Security Network codenamed, Amotekun.
The minister, through his press secretary, had declared the six South West governors of Oyo, Ogun, Ondo, Osun and Lagos lacked the constitutional powers to set up the regional security outfit, raised to combat kidnapping, banditry and other violent crimes in the region.
He said the security initiative amounted to duplication or usurpation of the mandate of the police, military and other security agencies empowered to defend Nigeria’s territories or parts thereof.
TYLPI, in a statement by its President and General Secretary, Olusegun Ahmadu and Olufemi Adefemiwa respectively, deplored the minister’s stance as insensitive, insincere and smacking of bias and double standard, when the federal authorities had kept mute and continued to support the formation and operation of similar security bodies, including Hisbah and Civilian Joint Task Force (JTF), in certain troubled parts of the North.
It dismissed the AGF’s allegation that the regional initiative breached the constitution as lame, hypocritical and vexatious, wondering: “Where was the Federal Government and the AGF when Hisbah operatives recently arrested a policeman in the North? Why would the same Federal Government that lent and still lends support to those outfits now find the constitution sacred?”
The group, comprising eminent Yoruba intellectuals, professionals and businessmen, in Nigeria and in the diaspora, said the Federal Government has tipped the nation to the precipice of crisis and instability, as “Malami’s insensitive and vexatious outburst has dangerously resurrected all the divisive tendencies- mutual distrust, differences, fissures and dichotomy which had plagued relations among various sections of the country, judging by the public outrage that has trailed the incident.”
To douse tension, advance national integration, and stave off looming crisis, TYLPI urged the Federal Government to encourage the South West governors to perfect the process that would make Amotekun effective as a demonstration of good faith and its professed commitment to safeguarding lives and property of all Nigerians irrespective of tribe, creed and political persuasions.