Akeredolu lashes out at Buhari for not allowing Ondo Amotekun Corps to carry automatic weapons

GOVERNOR Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo State has accused the federal government of bias by refusing to allow the Western Nigeria Security Network Agency popularly known as Amotekun to carry sophisticated firearms but granting this privilege to similar bodies.

Over recent years, heavily-armed Fulani herdsmen have been running riot across Nigeria, engaging in kidnapping, armed robbery and banditry. To address the problem, the governors from across the southwest geo-political zone decided to launch a regional security outfit named Amotekun, which translates to leopard in the local Yoruba language.

In early 2020, the state houses of assemblies in the six states of the southwest geo-political zone passed by-laws making Amotekun a legal and constitutional entity.  Now that Amotekun is legal, Governor Akeredolu wanted the agency to carry sophisticated firearms in Ondo State but this request was rejected by the federal government.

According to the governor, while the request was denied when it came to the Amotekun Corps in Ondo State, approval was granted to a similar request made by the Katsina State Security Outfit. According to the governors, denying Amotekun the right to bear arms would expose the southwest to life-threatening marauders and organised crime.

Governor Akeredolu said:  “We believe in one Nigeria but we cannot have one country, two systems. The video making the rounds showing the equivalent of the Western Nigeria Security Network  in Katsina obtaining federal government approval to bear arms is fraught with great dangers.

“Denying Amotekun the urgently needed rights to legitimately bear arms is a repudiation of the basis of true federalism, which we have been clamouring for. That Katsina was able to arm its state security force with the display of an AK-47 means we are pursuing a one-country, two-system solution to the national question.

“If the Katsina situation confers advantages on some in the face of commonly faced existential threats, it means that our unitary policing system, which has failed, is a deliberate method of subjugation which must be challenged. The independence agreement was based on a democratic arrangement to have a federal state and devolve internal security mechanics.

"We must go back to that agreement. Denying Amotekun the right to bear arms exposes the South-West to life-threatening marauders and organised crime and it is also the deliberate destruction of our agricultural sector.”