Akeredolu insists Nigerians must arm, defend themselves against insecurity

The Governor of Ondo State, Arakunrin Rotimi Akeredolu has, on Monday, reinforced his earlier call for Nigerians to arm and defend themselves against the monstrous insecurity threatening the lives and prosperity of citizens.

Governor Akeredolu repeated the call when he appeared as a guest on Channels’ Television.

The Chairman of the Southwest Governors’ Forum further pointed out that the present security architecture of policing in Nigeria was not commensurate to prevailing security challenges in the country.

Speaking, he said: “Governor Mattawale’s view might be extreme, but when you are pushed to the wall, there’s nothing much you can say.

“Our people cannot afford to lay back; we are not lazy people; we are indomitable people and we must fight these people back and whosoever has the upper hand will survive.

“We must be alert when we see strange people around us.

We have put more men on the streets and patrols everywhere using Amotekun and the lesson we have learnt is we can’t afford to run away; we must face these people.

“I’ve told traditional rulers that we must get ready to defend our people and our land, we can’t fold our hands; when these people come to you, you must fight back!”

He, meanwhile, admitted limitations of the Southwest Security Network (SWSN), also known as Amotekun corps in fighting insecurity, saying:

“We are happy with Amotekun. But we do know its limitation, which has been caused by our perverted federalism; something is definitely wrong with the federalism we are running.

“We can’t keep running with one command of police from Abuja and think we can police this country properly. Why don’t we run state police?

“Amotekun is faced with limitations on which arms to carry and the people facing us are carrying powerful ammunition.”

The governor added further: “If care is not taken, governors and other governments will be forced to get ammunitions for their people to fight back because there is no other way to fight this problem.

“What we need to do is to get our priorities right and what we should prioritise as a nation today is state police and let the state police be well armed.

“The states should spend money on their police and have a duty to defend their people. The National Assembly has a duty to take this law out of place.

“The police are currently over stretched! There’s no other solution but state police.”

On the recent Owo attack, Akeredolu said: “We are yet to make headway but we are still on their trail.

“We have recovered the vehicles they used and the phones and we have handed them over to security personnel”, he stressed.

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