Amotekun personnel, trainers must be Yoruba – Group

As South-West states hold public hearings for the creation of the regional security outfits codenamed Amotekun, the Yoruba World Congress (YWC) has described Amotekun as “an exclusive Yoruba instrument of collective self-defence.”

Yoruba leader, Prof. Banji Akintoye however said, “Those responsible for organizing Amotekun, for recruiting people into it, for training the recruits, and for commanding and supervising the trained recruits, are, and must be Yoruba.”

In a message to members of the Congress, he also instructed that those persons to be “recruited and trained for service in Amotekun are, and must be, Yoruba.”

“The Yoruba nation does not, and cannot, understand anything different from that. The Yoruba nation is blessed with millions of men and women who are eager to serve Amotekun,” he said.

If the message by the Yoruba leader is anything to go by, it means the agitation by the Fulani group represented by the Miyetti Allah and the Jamu Nati Fulbe Association to be carried along in the Amotekun initiative may not be realized.

According to the Yoruba leader, no other group apart from the Yoruba can dictate how the region would run its security outfit.

He said, “We Yoruba are confident that the recruitments to Amotekun will be competently, patriotically and wisely carried out by those in charge. But we want to add the following.

“Since the Amotekun teams will be defending their localities, we urge those charged with the recruitment to recruit Local Government area by Local Government area, and to recruit in each Local Government area the small group that will defend and protect their Local Government area.

“These should be persons who belong to, and who reside in the Local Government area.  We also urge the recruiters not to forget to recruit some of our local hunters, so as to add their well-known expertise to the defence and protection of their Local Government areas.”

However, The Muslim Congress (TMC) in Lagos in a position paper presented at the public hearing in Lagos today expressed concerns over the ambiguities in the recruitment process and operation of Amotekun.

Engr. AbdulHakeem Ogunbajo, who spoke on behalf of the TMC, said as much as Amotekun is a welcome initiative, “we wish to caution against potential organisational and functional frailties of the outfit that may portend mortal threat to the very lives it is purposed to protect given the sneaking suspicion that has trailed the creation of the outfit.

“The lack of clarity in the recruitment process and procedures – we urge the government to give lucid account of the selection process in order to assure the citizens that no untrained individual or vagrant is giving fire arms or lethal weapons in which case may be tantamount to feeding further breakdown of law and order.

“There is need for a unified stance guided by a consensus of interest, irrespective of political, religious or ethnic affiliations.”