Stop banditry or contend with militia groups, Oke tells FG

Afenifere chieftain in Kwara State, Wole Oke, has urged the Federal Government to halt the incessant killings of innocent Nigerians by bandits or risk the proliferation of ethnic militias across the country as an unauthorised defensive mechanism.

Oke said the more violent attacks on the over 250 ethnic groups across the country, the more the victims would build resistance armies to protect their lives and their inheritance from the vampires operating in the guise of banditry.

Speaking with The Guardian, yesterday, in Ilorin, the Kwara branch Secretary of the Yoruba socio-cultural organisation for 16 years, clamoured for the provision of more sophisticated arms for the Amotekun corps protecting the Southwest.

He said: “Why should we deprive the Amotekun the privilege to carry an equivalent degree of arms as the people coming into their land like an army raised for the systematic extermination of every ethnic nationality in the country?

“The only reason to justify the denial to use sophisticated weapons for the defence of their people is that the invaders should either stop their dastardly act or that the Federal Government should halt their nefarious activities.”

Oke lamented the recent gruesome murder of two monarchs in Ekiti State and the kidnap of some pupils and school staff also in the same state.

According to him, if nothing is urgently done to curb the menace, it could spread to other states adjoining Ekiti. He added that many people in the Southwest, who are agrarian, have reportedly abandoned their farms for fear of being attacked by the intruders.

Speaking on the country’s economic situation, he canvassed more patience for the President Bola Tinubu-led government, noting that the expected reformation could take a longer period.

He said: “You don’t make fat within a day the boy that had been famished for over a decade. What we need is patience. The President was well prepared for this job. His antecedents in Lagos are there for all to see. He can also replicate this at the national level.”