• Thursday, March 28, 2024
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BusinessDay

Operation Amotekun has come to stay, AGF should wake up from slumber – Makinde

Seyi Makinde

Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo state has blasted the Attorney Geberal of Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami over the statement credited to him that the recently established Western Nigeria Security Network codenamed ‘Operation Amotekun’ is illegal and not backed by the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Governor Makinde of Oyo state, one of the six Southwest governors and the host of the recently launched Operation Amotekun in Ibadan last week, wondered how the AGF would just wake up in the mid of sleep and declared Operation Amotekun is illegal and unconstitutional.

The governor, who paid a courtesy call on former President Olusegun Obasanjo at his Penthouse located within the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL) in Abeokuta on Wednesday, said that the pronouncement of the regional security outfit as illegal was a joke taken too far and a pronunciation which was not backed by official statement from the Presidency.

He said, “My personal position is that you actually don’t run a govt on the social media. If I see a letter or if I get a call from the AGF telling me what you (journalists) just said then it will be a different type of reaction.

“I have been reading just like you (journalists) read on the social media. I haven’t seen anything official to that effect.

“Besides, I don’t think for a country like Nigeria, the AGF will just wake up and make his own laws. He may interpret and advise the President if there are legal issues but I haven’t seen anything that gives that power to the AGF to make such declaration.

“This outfit is complimentary to the efforts of the Nigeria Police and other Security agencies in fighting insecurity in the Southwest region.”

BusinessDay reports that though the Oyo state governor, who visited the former president in company of former Secretary to the Oyo State Government, Olayiwola Olakunjo and Fatai Owoseni, the Special Adviser on Security Matters to Oyo state governor, held a two-hour closed door meeting, the details of the meeting were not disclosed to the waiting journalists.

 

RAZAQ AYINLA, Abeokuta