Amotekun: Tinubu Breaks Silence

All Progressives Congress National Leader, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, Wednesday rose to the challenge with his full backing of the Southwest regional security outfit, Amotekun even as he called for private discussion between Southwest governors and the Minister of Justice, Mallam Abubakar Malami.

He said the foundation of the country had not been put at risk with the South-west regional security outfit launched by the governors of the zone in a bit to confront the insecurity in their states.

The former Lagos governor, however, warned that, that fabric could be torn by what he called the “dangerous rhetoric of those who should know better.”

In his first intervention in the controversy surrounding Amotekun, Asiwaju Tinubu said: “Those claiming that this limited, inoffensive addition to security threatens the Republic have taken themselves upon a madcap excursion.

“Those claiming that the Federal Government seeks to terribly suppress the Southwest have also lost their compass. Those who occupy these two extremes have sunken into the dark recesses of fear and political paranoia that can undo a nation if such sentiments are allowed to gestate”.

While noting that as governor he confronted crime by adopting similar innovative approaches, he said the crack in the present arrangement appeared to be the lack of communication with the Attorney General.

“The governors state that they consulted regularly with the police and security agencies. This was the right thing to do.  However, their failure to include the office of the Attorney-General in these discussions is the fount of the current public uproar.

“This was an unfortunate omission the governors should regret and seek to remedy. However, the conceptual merits and positive functional aspects of Amotekun should not be tainted by this procedural defect.

“While the Attorney-General is a conscientious public servant, he is also human. Not having been consulted, he was suddenly faced with an unexpected public announcement regarding a matter within his official ambit. He likely feared the failure to consult him meant that federal prerogatives were being encroached.

“To blame him for this conclusion would be to blame human nature itself. Though his negative reaction was understandable it was also unhelpful.

“The Attorney-General acted hastily in rendering a public statement that was more inaccurate than it should have been. Amotekun was never proposed as a “defence” agency; the Attorney-General erred in using this description.

“The use of uniforms and brightly coloured vehicles may not be the best ideas but they do not render Amotekun a defence agency or paramilitary group any more than a designated school van carrying uniformed students constitutes a paramilitary deployment.”

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