Ekiti State House of Assembly yesterday, committed the Amotekun bill to its House Committee on Security for proper legislative scrutiny and scheduled a public hearing on the initiative for today.
The bill, meant for the establishment of the Ekiti State Security Network Agency and Amotekun Corps was committed to the committee after passing through first and second readings at the Assembly plenary on Thursday.
The State executive council had at its meeting on Wednesday adopted the draft bill of the proposed law as a document of the state after exhaustive deliberation, before transmitting same to the assembly for perusal and consideration.
After exhaustively debated the bill at the House plenary on Thursday, the lawmakers, unanimous agreed that the security outfit was a child of necessity which ought to have been established before now.
They stated that every Nigeria has right to life in line with Section 33 of the 1999 Constitution as espoused by Section 4 (C ) of the Amotekun bill which emphasized protection of lives and property as primary responsibility of government.
The Speaker, Hon Funminiyi Afuye, while speaking on the floor of the House, said the assembly will do everything in line with its the rules and standing order to give accelerated passage to the bill.
He said, “It has passed through the first and second readings. Both moral and jurisprudence aspects of the bill had been extensively debated. We have committed it to the Committee of the House, which will be holding a public hearing today(Thursday) at 2pm.
“We are still on course and in line with procedures of lawmaking . We have not breached any procedure and we won’t breach the procedure in passing the bill into law”, he said.
The Speaker had directed the Majority Leader, Hon Gboyega Aribisogan, who had earlier moved the motion for adjournment to next week Tuesday to amend the motion for adjournment to Friday, February 14, given the indication that the bill will be passed into law on Friday.
While charging the committee to be painstaking in ensure that the bill is passed earnestly, Afuye said : “we all know that internal and external migrations had caused banditry , kidnappings, robbery and insurgency in some African Nations, Nigeria inclusive and solution to it by law is protection of lives and property.
“The insecurity in our territory had led to loss of lives, farmers are no longer safe. Even if you do commercial farming, some people will go there and destroy it and this has been reducing the resources of our people.
“Recently someone was kidnapped and the family paid a ransom of N20m, one can imagine the psychological and economic effects of this and that necessitated the Amotekun issue”, he said.
The deputy Speaker of the House, Hon Hakeen Jamiu, in his submission said the increasing act of terrorism by Boko Haram in Nigeria, herdsmen attacks and unwholesome activities of armed bandits and kidnappers, could no longer be contained only conventional security agencies and so the time has come for states to look inwards and come up with home grown solution to it.
“The high level of displacement and migration from war turn regions, robbery, kidnappings, herdsmen-farmers clashes, insurgency and terrorism had made things difficult for our conventional security architecture.
“It is now obvious that our police and army are overwhelmed and these menaces could only be tackled at the regional level. Amotekun has brought us to that level now.
“Some of the killings and kidnappings perpetrated in our nation showed that there was internal connivance. We must have locals who can really gather intelligence. The Amotekun personnel can even go digital . They can monitor our people with technology. I want to say that this bill represents what everybody in the southwest is expected”.
