• Thursday, March 28, 2024
businessday logo

BusinessDay

Amotekun boss raises alarm over role of ‘Okada’ riders in banditry in Oyo

Amotekun chairman assures protection for vulnerable tourist sites in Oyo

Kunle Togun, Chairman, South-western Security Network code-named ‘Amotekun’ in Oyo State, on Monday, raised the alarm over the role of commercial motorcycle (Okada) riders in the state.

Togun, a retired army colonel, alleged that “most of the Okada riders are spies for kidnappers and bandits that have entered the Southwest from the porous borders of Nigeria.”

According to him, foreigners who were ferried in trailers into Oyo State during the Covid-19 in lockdown in 2020 could not speak any Nigerian language, but French, whenever accosted by his men.

Togun hinted that the warning from the state governor to traditional chiefs to stop allocating lands to herdsmen with no papers showing Nigerian nationality would go a long way in stemming the spate of killings and kidnapping in the Southwest region.

Read Also: Covid-19 second wave in Nigeria: What does the data say?

Responding to questions from reporters in his office in Ibadan, yesterday, the retired colonel said the greed of some traditional and community leaders in many towns led to high rate of insecurity, which he said Amotekun has been curbing.

“Before Amotekun was established, the problem of the Southwest since the invasion of the land by these herdsmen has been our traditional chiefs and leaders; they take money, cows and cars from these people, and allow them to settle and wreak havoc in their domains.

“I have attended meetings of Obas in Oke-Ogun and I told them to stop giving lands to foreigners, these herdsmen are called Bororos in Oke- Ogun and Ibarapa areas, they are not Nigerians, what is happening should not be analysed in the area of religion, it is territorial expansion”.