New Telegraph

Worsening insecurity: Govs‘re scared of Abuja –Gen Ishola Williams

…says there’s political arm-twisting of security agencies

 

One-time Commandant, Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), Nigerian Army, Major-General Ishola Williams (rtd), has taken a swipe at governors in the South West saying some of them are scared of Abuja – an euphemism for the President Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal Government, even as he said that the worsening insecurity in the country is yet to reach the stage of that of Latin America and they should deal with it squarely.

 

 

Gen. Ishola made the assertion in an exclusive interview with Sunday Telegraph even as he insisted that they have enough resources at their disposal to confront  the situation.

 

He said: “Even though there is political authority over safety and security organisations, let us leave politics apart, if you take the South West for example, Lagos created the Neighbourhood Safety Corp. If it is working well, with their Ministry of Home Affairs in Lagos, there should be no crime or it will be reduced to the barest minimum in Lagos.

 

“Why? All members of the Neighbourhood Corps are in the community. Some of them may not need to wear  uniforms. What would they be doing? Gathering information. What do you see?

 

They are in traffic, controlling traffic. Are they being trained properly to do that? He continued: “What I have come to discover is that we put people in uniform just because we want to create jobs for people. It’s the same thing with the Amotekun.

 

Ogun State just launched its own Amotekun one year after it came into existence. Some of the governors are so scared of Abuja that they are behaving like fools.

 

“Amotekun should be able  to reduce crime by 95%. We have not reached the level of Latin America’s crime rate. This is the time to deal with it. “The governors have plenty of money.

 

What are they doing with the Safety/ Security votes? They share them for political patronage. At one time, some of them were buying vehicles for the police, even though the police was collecting money from the Federal Government.

 

This is a very corrupt country. That is why we have problems.” Read the full interview on pages 14 and 19

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