Oyo govt ready to end kidnapping, insecurity – Makinde

Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo state has said he is ready to work with Amotekun and other security agencies to end kidnapping and insecurity in the state.

Briefing newsmen at the Oyo state Government House, Agodi, on Wednesday, the governor said in doing this, his administration will work relentlessly to tackle cases of kidnapping and insecurity.

While emphasizing that the safety and security of all residents of the state remains a top priority for his government, Gov Makinde lauded all heads of security agencies in the state for doing their best to secure the state.

 “The safety and security of all residents of Oyo state remain our top priority. We will continue to work relentlessly to tackle cases of kidnapping and insecurity in our state. We are also putting in place other policies to address insecurity, especially with regards to youth restiveness,” he said.

The governor added, “The state government is already setting up proper information channels for security agencies in the state in order for them to keep the information flow simple”.

On the Amotekun corps, he said some individuals wants Amotekun to fail and had been assailing the security outfit with all sorts of misinformation and fake news, despite the fact that community policing model remains the only way to solve the insecurity challenge in the country.

Gov Makinde vowed that Oyo state government will not sit idly and watch any Amotekun operative operate outside the ambitions of the law and that it would also not yield to blackmail against the new agency and that the state has identified that there is presently some friction between the Amotekun and Nigerian Police in the state.

“Amotekun is not operating in a vacuum. They are a creation of the law of the state. The Nigerian Police is a creation of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. It is normal that we have inter and intra agency friction where possible, but we will get everybody together and seek alignment towards the same end basically,”

The governor stressed that Oyo state government will set up a committee to iron out the frosty relationship between the two institutions and bring about an alignment in their operations, saying, “Community policing is the way forward and we have to make it work.”

” If somebody says he is abused by Amotekun and cannot pinpoint the Amotekun personnel in such an area, you are probably not from that neighborhood and you are a fake news carrier. So, as I always say, I know we do have trust-deficit between the people and the authorities, and this makes it easier to think the worst of people in authority. But we should not cut our nose to spite our face. We must find a balance so that we do not turn the people trying to protect us to our enemies.”

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