Ondo State Governor Rotimi Akeredolu has backed the right of Nigerians to keep and bear arms for self-defense against robbers and terrorists because the Muhammadu Buhari administration cannot provide their safety and security.
Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) Akeredolu praised Zamfara State Governor Bello Matawalle for encouraging residents to arm themselves for self-defense.
The governor made this announcement through Dr. Doyin Odebowale, his Senior Special Assistant on Special Duties and Strategy.
According him, “It signals a situation of near-capitulation on the part of the security agencies centrally controlled by the federal government. It portends great danger for the polity.
“It is a sad commentary on the increasing inability and impotence of the Zamfara State Government, and other states, to protect their citizens in the wake of relentless and mindless assaults by terrorists and bandits.
“It suggests a total lack of trust between the state government and federal government on one hand, and the helpless and hopeless situation in which the people have found themselves concerning the security of lives, on the other.
“The stark reality confronting the people of Zamfara leaves the government with no esoteric option than to lean heavily on the current arrangement. The government and the people of Zamfara State have been pushed to the wall. The feeling of despondency is pervasive in the land.”
The National Security Advisor (NSA) and Inspector-General of Police must give a license to possess a specific sort of guns, the governor claimed, therefore the move might be hampered by current federal policies.
“No such licenses have been issued to individuals since 2007 while those which existed had been revoked. Therefore, this directive, attractive and compelling in the current circumstances, may be stifled by existing federal arrangement,” he said.
When it is clear that the nation’s security agencies are overburdened and diverted by centrifugal forces, which he described as the major factor, among many others, exacerbating the current security challenges in the country, he regretted that the federal government has purposefully denied regional security outfits the right to bear firearms.
Nigeria, he claimed, could not legitimately claim to have a federal system of government if it was run as a unitary one.
“A federal system of government cannot be administered as if the country is a unitary colony, controlled, rigidly, at the centre, while the constituent units are treated as mere outposts.
“This fact, coupled with the logic of divergence and rapid growth in population, imposes no other practicable measure on the managers of this country, including our legislators, than to accept the inevitability of the establishment of a state police.”
