Senior
Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu had said
during a programme on Channels TV that the IGP would determine the structure of
Amotekun.
Elder
statesman, Chief Ayo Adebanjo on Tuesday attacked the presidency for saying
that the Inspector General of Police would determine the structure of South-west
regional security outfit, Amotekun.
Shehu
was speaking on the approval of N13bn by the Federal Government for community
policing across the 36 states of the federation.
He
said, “Whatever name they go by, Amotekun or whatever, will be streamlined and
they will be run in accordance with the structure as defined by the
Inspector-General of Police. They will be localised, they will be owned by
local communities, they will be managed by them.”
The
President’s spokesman further stated that the community policing structure
would be the same across the 36 states and whatever does not conform with the
national structure would not be “in the scheme of things”.
But
Adebanjo, in an interview rejected the presidency’s assertion, saying that they
are ‘arrant nonsense.’
According
to him, “What Shehu said is arrant nonsense! Is he the Attorney General (of the
federation)? He is just talking trash. Please quote me.
“They
are controlling the police from the centre, it is not working, now they want to
control Amotekun again from the same position? Do you have an IG of police in
America? Even in Britain, it is not centralized. What you have is metropolitan
police.”
Adebanjo
wondered: “How can you send someone from Jigawa State to control the police in
Ibadan? What does he know? You say the Governors are the chief security
officers of their states, yet they control nothing, what kind of arrangement is
that?”
He
said Shehu might not understand as the
issue was beyond him.
He
added: “I don’t want to engage him because he may not understand. The issue is
beyond him. Amotekun is the case of localizing security, yet they want to
control it from the Centre like the police, how?”
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