Why 2023 elections may not hold in South West — Ex-YCE President

…says kidnapping no longer Fulani business, all regions now involved

A former National President of the Yoruba Council of Elders (YCE), Dansaaki Samuel Adeleye Agbede, has expressed his fears that the 2023 elections might not hold in the South West going by the rate at which kidnappings have increased in the zone recently. Speaking during an in-terview with journalists in Ibadan, Oyo State capital, Dansaaki, a member of the Senior Elders Forum of the YCE expressed fears that the 2023 elections, which governors in the zone are concentrating on, may be a mirage if the security lapse continues unabated. His anxiety was fuelled by the recent kidnapping and killing of some motorists along the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. His words: “We, the Senior Elders of YCE, have been crying to our governors because they were the ones who invited security experts.

Since they have been doing things to check the menace of insecurity which has now become a nuisance, they should do it with all their hearts. “The establishment of Amotekun is a laudable project which all of us in the South West have embraced. The issue of security of lives and property is not only for us in the Yoruba Nation, it’s for everybody who is resident in that zone irrespective of where you come from whether you are a Nigerian or you are from overseas. “Kidnappers don’t look at people’s faces. What they want is money and there is a new dimension to it now. Our own people now have been engaging in criminal acts.

It is no longer Fulani business alone, it has been embraced by all and sundry across all the regions,” Dansaaki said. In the same vein, the Soludero Hunters Association of Nigeria through its National President, Oba Nureni Akintola Ajijola Anabi, said it has concluded plans to hold an all-inclusive security meeting to check the security threats.

Disclosing that the meeting would hold on February 4 at the Ilaji Farms Hotel, Ibadan, Ajijola called on Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State to empower the hunters, noting that: “If they are properly mobilized, the bandits who inflict indescribable suffering on the people in zone will disappear!” To be at the security meeting, according to him, are: a former President of the country, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, Governors Seyi Makinde of Oyo State, Gboyega Oyetola (Osun), Dapo Abiodun (Ogun), Rotimi Akeredolu (Ekiti), Babajide Sanwo-Olu (Lagos) and many royal fathers. (New Telegraph: Excludes headline)