Ekiti State Governor Kayode Fayemi has said insecurity would have worsened in the Southwest, if not for the establishment of the region’s security outfit, Amotekun.
Fayemi said this yesterday while delivering the sixth convocation lecture of the Nigerian Institute of Journalism (NIJ) at Ogba in Ikeja, the Lagos State capital. In the lecture, titled: Media, Security and Nation-Building, the Ekiti State helmsman said governors were the ones funding the Nigeria police, yet unable to control them. He said: “I am supporting Amotekun. In states where we have already set up Amotekun, they are really doing well. You should find out more about what they do. If we have not had Amotekun in many of the Southwest states, the situation would not be what we are talking about today. “We can do a lot better with them; we can strengthen them; we can fund them more. But the important point is about possibilities, and it is something that will grow.”
The chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) noted that though the Federal Government claimed that states cannot fund the police, governors were the one funding the Federal Government-run police structure. The governor listed the funding areas as buying cars, paying for insurance, among others.
Despite the governors’ contributions to the operations of the police, he said, they lack the power to control the force. Fayemi said: “I no longer know a single governor in this country who does not believe in police being involved at the local level. There is no single governor, whether you call it state police or you call it community police, or local government police, there must be multi-level policing.
