Why Amotekun Won’t Be Allowed In Lagos State – Sanwo-olu

• LNSC also engaged in border patrol – Sanwo-olu

Lagos State governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, says the peculiarities of the state and its prevailing realities do not call for adoption of the Western Nigeria Security Network (Operation Amotekun).

Amotekun was established on January 9, 2020, by the six South-West states to address the nagging security challenges that ravage the region. Lagos, however, did not participate in the inauguration of the security outfit.

Speaking when he featured on Channels TV  programme on Sunday evening, Sanwo-olu said Amotekun was not needed in Lagos, adding that the regional security outfit was of little or no importance to the people of the state.

Sanwo-olu, who expressed his support for Amotekun and hailed his counterparts for the initiative, said launching of the outfit in Lagos would amount to duplication of agencies.

To corroborate his assertion, the governor said the Lagos Neighborhood Safety Corps (LNSC) performed the same tasks as Amotekun and was enough to address any security concern of residents of the state.

Sanwo-olu opined that LNSC represented in Lagos what Amotekun stood for in other South West states who had adopted it as local security architecture, noting that the difference is in the rubric.

“So it’s just a name change in the case of Lagos. I appreciate what my colleague governors are doing, and they also appreciate the peculiar nature of Lagos,” Mr Sanwo-Olu stated. “I have got over 7,000 neighbourhood watch personnel in Lagos, who are doing exactly the same thing that we have Amotekun doing.”

The LNSC is a uniformed security agency established by a law of the Lagos State House of Assembly in 2016 to help the police and other security outfits in maintaining law and order in the state. Its officers operate in the 57 LGA and LCDA in Lagos.

According to the Lagos government, the LNSC officers are drawn from the various LGA and LCDA where they operate, a conscious move to use their local knowledge of their vicinity to achieve “maximum grass root” intelligence gathering and community policing.

Sanwo-Olu added, “They are there at the border post giving us daily monitoring in their localities and feeding it back to the central. They are the ones feeding us with information. But they cannot carry arms and prosecute people.”

Apart from community policing, the governor disclosed that the LNSC also engaged in border patrol.

“The borders that I have in Lagos are outside of the Atlantic Ocean is Ogun state,” he said.

The origin of the LNSC can be traced to the military administration of Brigadier Buba Marwa, who, on October 20, 1996, established Neighbourhood Watch outfits by edict Number 12 and published in the official gazette No 34 Vol. 29 (October 29, 1996), according to information on the Lagos government’s website.

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