Afenifere, a pan-Yoruba socio-political group, has condemned the recent terrorist attacks in South-Western Nigeria and called on governments and security agencies to do more to stop banditry.
In a statement yesterday, Comrade Jare Ajayi, the National Publicity Secretary of the socio-political group, said that the Yoruba people were worried about the devaluation of human life that happens almost every day in some states in the region. This is because of the brutal way that kidnapped victims are being killed and how abductees are being beaten and humiliated.
“One of the incidents mentioned was that of Ondo State, where churches, police stations, residences, and highways were targeted. Also in Kwara, where communities were destroyed, and in Oke Ogun, Oyo State, where farmers were slaughtered and passengers were attacked on the Igbeti-Kisi road, and so on.
Afenifere remembered the story of one of the kidnappers of a doctor and his brother in Benin, Edo State, according to Sunday Independent.
He and his gang killed the doctor’s younger brother and then let the doctor go after getting the money. The daughter of one of the kidnappers got sick. He and a friend took the girl to the hospital, where the doctor who had been kidnapped but later released was working. The doctor knew who had taken him and called the police to have them arrested.
The socio-political group says that the problem can be solved because bandits are not ghosts or invisible. They underline that one option to deal with the problem is to cut off the bandits’ financial sources.
Some of the sources include dishonest rich people, organizations (both local and international), some state actors, and communities that pay protection money (also called “protection levies” or “harvest fees”). Others are ransoms paid to hostages and blatant theft.
“Government should also look into foreign interests that are involved in illegal mining without following the proper steps as possible masterminds behind the complete destruction of communities.
Some of those who had been caught and put on trial admitted that they had sponsors. To get things done, we needed to go after the bandits’ sponsors and middlemen without hesitation, cut off their funding and weapons, raid the bushes where they hide, stop corruption and sabotage in the forces, give security personnel more power and motivation, and get the state police up and running right away.
Afenifere praised President Bola Tinubu for being determined to get state police off the ground. They pointed to his demand for the National Assembly to speed up the process of changing the parts of the Constitution that need to be changed so that state police may start right away.
Afenifere also praised Mr. Tunji Disu, the new IGP, for his dedication, which was shown by his creation of a committee to figure out how state police should work.
It told the governments of the South-West to quickly set up ways to raid the bushes where these bandits are hiding, keep an eye on the bushes all the time, and work with the federal government to make sure that state police start working right away in their states.
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