Ado Ekiti, the Ekiti state capital was Tuesday rocked by a protest from some youth drawn from the South West geo-political zone, against the formation of the Western Nigerian Security Network, code named Operation Amotekun.
The group under the banner of Yoruba Appraisal Forum is asking the body scrapped across the six states of Ekiti, Oyo, Osun, Lagos, Ondo and Ogun states to avoid future calamity.
The group said they had uncovered alleged plot to use Amotekun to destabilise the South-west and ultimately the entire country in 2023.
They demanded that the entire Yoruba race would be endangered in 2023 with the existence of Amotekun, predicting that the network will be hijacked by politicians for insidious mission in the coming elections.
Some of the placards they flaunted read: ‘Amotekun Will Turn our Youths to Militia Group’, ‘Amotekun Motive, Shine Your Eyes’, ‘Amotekun Can Bring Proliferation of Arms’, among others.
Addressing journalists at Ajilosun area where the protest was held, the group’s coordinator, Mr. Adeshina Animasaun, said the Amotekun project was a laudable one, but insisted that it has been hijacked by those nursing ambition for 2023.
Animasaun appealed to President Muhammadu Buhari to rejig the country’s security architecture to prevent resurgence of what he called ‘militia groups’ with tendencies to pose dangers to the lives of the people.
“We call on President Buhari to use his good office to call the southwest governors to order by prevailing on them not to sign the Amotekun bills into laws yet, until proper checks about such security are done”, he said.
The group faulted the hurried manner at which the governors conducted the public hearings, leading to the formation of Amotekun, saying: “It ought to have been done senatorially, rather than bringing few people to the state capitals to contribute in a programme that lasted for 30 minutes.”
