The pan-Yoruba socio-cultural organisation, Afenifere, and the chairman of the South-West Governors’ Forum and Ondo State Governor, Rotimi Akeredolu, have declared that the security of lives and property of the people of the South-West remains important to the governments of the region.
Akeredolu, while reacting to the allegation of the Arewa Youth Consultative Forum (AYCF) that the State’s security outfit, Amotekun, was being used arbitrarily against northerners in the State, said security remained one of the pillars of his administration and he would not relent in investing in the security of lives and property without discrimination.
The AYCF had, earlier on Friday, alleged harassment of northerners in Ondo State. The group, in an issued statement by its national president, Yerima Shettima, took a swipe at the Ondo State government for “looking the other way while northerners get arrested by armed militia disguised as Amotekun on trumped-up charges”.
It also condemned the activities of “armed gangs masquerading as security agents in a nation where the police, the DSS, NSCDC and others are the only recognised enforcers of law and order”.
The AYF said: “If the people of Northern Nigeria had taken the same path of extrajudicial harassment, by now no indigene of Ondo State would be living and doing business in the region.
“We have had enough of this unbridled harassment and intimidation of northerners in Ondo State and we are beginning to see that the disposition of the state governor is what has emboldened extrajudicial militia outfits to make innocent northerners in Ondo the butt of shameful intimidation.”
Speaking through the State’s Commissioner for Information and Orientation, Donald Ojogo, Akeredolu dismissed the northern youths as not worthy of his government’s response.
The Secretary-General of Afenifere, Chief Sola Ebiseni, also said: “The youths don’t deserve my comment. They need to be more educated as youths. I don’t take them seriously. Afenifere relates with their fathers, not the youths”.
