Insecurity: Afenifere, YCM demand prosecution of culprits
…Doubt success of Buhari’s drones, CCTV initiative
Pan-yoruba socio-political organisation (Afenifere) and the Yoruba Patriot Movement (YPM) have demanded for the immediate prosecution of culprits apprehended over their involvement in banditry, kidnapping and other related crimes in the region.
The group also cast doubts over the success of President Muhammadu Buhari’s plan for states to introduce Closed- Circuit television ( CCTV) and drones to fight crime in the region.
President Buhari had in a meeting with traditional rulers from the South-west states on Wednesday, revealed his administration’s security plans, which include to license states to
deploy drones and monitor their environment, while CCTV would also be deployed on major highways in the country.
But speaking in separate interviews with BusinessDay, Wednesday, Yinka Odumakin publicity secretary of Afenifere, and Soji Adejumo national president of YPM, said the refusal of the Federal Government to prosecute culprits arrested over their involvement in various crimes in the region had escalated the security situation.
Odumakin however, said CCTV and drones could only be used when those involved in a crime were not known, adding that perpetrators of the current criminal activities in the region had publicly admitted to the crime.
According to him, “What does the CCTV and drone they are talking about mean? You use drone when you don’t know the cause of a crime, but here the people have owned up to the crime, they should be prosecuted but they are not doing this; the criminals should be apprehended.
“This has led to impunity, personally, the drones and CCTV initiatives would fail,” Odumakin said
Speaking further, Adejumo noted that the current attack in the region was premeditated, stressing that it was part of an Islamisation plan.
“The problem is that no one is being prosecuted, the killings in the Southwest are premeditated, remotely conceived, guided and executed by the herdsmen carrying out their Islamisation agenda; their plan will fail and it will be resisted.
“We have always enjoyed peaceful co-existence with them here until they started attacking us; a lot of traders from the North and Southeast are living and doing business here in the Yoruba land,” Adejumo said.