Honourable Funminiyi Afuye, Speaker of Ekiti State House of Assembly has said that the Western Nigeria Security Network (WNSN) popularly called Amotekun will not pose a problem or work outside the ambit of the law because section 19 of the law setting it up has provided limits under which it would operate.
Afuye had in a local media on Friday maintained that the law setting up the organisation would be domesticated by each State, stressing that Amotekun would not operate outside the constitution.
Answering questions on the possibility of conflict with the police, Afuye said, “The essence of the state is to protect lives and property. Provision of the law takes care of the limit of Amotekun. There will be no conflict with the police; there will be no conflict among states, just like the Joint Task Force (JTF) in the North is supporting the Army.”
He said that the implementation would start once signed into law, stressing that recruitment of members of the regional security outfit would be devoid of political colouration.
The lawmaker said that security was local, maintaining that WNSN would recruit people with knowledge and history of the environment, pointing out that it was for that reason that Amotekun would be preferred to the police who most times have no knowledge of the nooks and crannies of the forest where criminals who terrorised the region operated from.
Speaking on the possibility of collaboration with other regional outfits, he said, “Security has no space. It is everywhere. A situation where people could not travel freely within the region was a huge problem. We would be ready to work with any other regional security outfit with the same objective.
“Development, Gender, for Western Nigeria, brought all the South West States together and the aim was for development. The group knew that without security, development would not thrive, which is why it looked into the issue of security, and the state governors keyed into it.”