By Ezeocha Nzeh
The plots to kill the South West governors conceived security outfit, Amotekun, has gathered momentum following a second protest letter to President Muhammadu Buhari by a coalition of Yoruba groups, who have maintained that the planned security formation by the South West governors will cause more harm than remedy the already tensed security situation in the zone
A coalition of Yoruba groups, under the aegis of Yoruba Appraisal Forum, has again appealed to President Muhammadu Buhari to urgently and decisively move against Amotekun to check imminent bloodshed in the region and Nigeria at large.
The Coalition stated that the alleged mishandling of the security situation in the South West by the “unorthodox and strange security arrangement called Amotekun,” especially since the outbreak of the ravaging COVID-19 pandemic in the country, underscored the need for the Federal Government to immediately move against the outfit now before it’s too late.
It alleged that in the name of Amotekun, some individuals in the South West had been exploiting the overstretched deployment of the police, due to the ravaging COVID-19 pandemic, “to sustain unprovoked attacks and intensify the provocation of other Nigerians.”
According to a statement by the Convener, Comrade Adeshina Animashaun, the coalition has, therefore, written a fresh letter to remind President Buhari of the need to urgently take a decisive step against Amotekun in order to save the country from those who have hijacked the South West security outfit.
It further stressed that the President must act now to prevent the threat Amotekun’s operations would pose to human lives and property of all residents in the region, including the Yoruba, especially now that a group, Yoruba World Congress (YWC), has dragged the region into the membership of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation (UNPO).
The Coalition, which has been in the forefront of agitation against the operations of Amotekun, which it claimed had been hijacked by some persons for the selfish interest of executing their personal agenda, said its fresh call on the President to stop the South West security outfit became imperative due to such recent developments indicating that the forces behind it had been taking further steps by internationalising their plan to dismember Nigeria.
The coalition, whose members had about two months ago carried out peaceful protests in different states in the South West against Amotekun, after petitioning President Muhammadu Buhari, leadership of the National Assembly, the service chiefs, the inspector general of police, the directors general of both the Department of State Services and the National Intelligence Agency, said that their latest letter to the President to wield the big stick against the regional security outfit followed the rise in the attacks and killing of other Nigerians residing in the region in recent times.
It alleged that since the President-General of the Yoruba World Congress (YWC), Prof. Banji Akintoye, announced late last month that the Yoruba ethnic group of Nigeria had been accepted as the 45th member of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation (UNPO), violent attacks on other Nigerians living in states across the South West had been on the increase.
The coalition also noted that Akintoye had in his statement described the Yoruba membership of the UNPO as “a very important step in the collective quest of well-meaning Yoruba people to achieve the goal of dignity and self-determination.”
The coalition’s reminder to the President on Amotekun partly states, “Your Excellency, we still maintain our stand on the urgent need to stop the Amotekun security outfit and the forces behind it from throwing the entire country into an unprecedented chaos, violence and danger.
“We make bold, Your Excellency, to state that our continued investigation of the security outfit has further underscored the conclusion that Amotekun is not for any noble cause. From the facts on the ground, the real intention of those who have now hijacked the security outfit is the dismemberment of Nigeria in the nearest future. Your Excellency, recent developments have further pointed to this fact about the Amotekun security outfit.”
The coalition, however, alleged in its letter to President Buhari that the attacks on Nigerians of other ethnic nationalities living in the South West, especially those from the North, would soon be deliberately further heightened by those planning to use Amotekun for their selfish agenda of dismembering Nigeria.
It said that the current attacks on the non-Yoruba in the region were deliberately carried out just to provoke other Nigerians in the South West to react and even retaliate in order for those behind such killings to have the grounds for unleashing violence on people of other ethnic groups throughout the region.
The coalition described Amotekun as the military machine being planned to be used by the forces that have hijacked it to pursue their hidden agenda, gain sympathy and obtain funding from international bodies such as the UNPO to ultimately dismember and secede from Nigeria.
It argued that contrary to claims by those sponsoring Amotekun, it was not established to provide security for the people of the South West.
“Your Excellency, we, therefore, demand that appropriate action should be taken urgently against the Amotekun security outfit to stop those who have hijacked it from achieving their devilish plans against the Nigerian nation.”
The coalition, therefore, urged President Buhari to urgently meet the governors of the six South West states with a view to impressing it on them the need to withdraw their support and stop the funding of Amotekun.
The Coalition also called on the Federal Government “to clinically dig into the origin of this political militia with a Judicial Panel of Inquiry to unravel the underlying factors and original reasons for setting it up,” adding, “Doing this will forestall the imminent breach of peace in Yorubaland and country in general.”
