• Attributes cause to heavy security presence in Ekiti
• Combs forests for kidnapped Kogi victims
• Parades 43 suspects
The Ondo State Security Network Agency, otherwise known as Amotekun Corps, yesterday, expressed concern over the influx of criminals, particularly kidnappers, into the state in the past few weeks.
Commander of Amotekun Corps in the state, Adetunji Adeleye, who attributed the situation to the ongoing security operations in neighbouring Ekiti State, said that the heat had made them flee to the state.
Adeleye, who revealed this, while parading 43 suspected criminals at the headquarters of the Corps in Alagbaka, Akure, maintained that the criminals would not be allowed to have a field day in any part of the state.
According to the Amotekun boss, more than half of the arrested individuals were profiled as suspected kidnappers. Adeleye further disclosed that operatives of Amotekun, as well as men of other conventional security agencies, had begun to comb the forests within the Ondo and Kogi borders to rescue some kidnapped victims who were abducted a few days ago.
“We still have issues with security challenges on our borders, especially the Kogi/Ondo border and the Edo/Ondo border. We are working on it and collaborating.
“As of yesterday morning, a combined team of security men, specifically the army from Kogi and Ondo, police from Kogi and Ondo, and Amotekun from Ondo, joined hands together to fish out the perpetrators of the last kidnapping around the Akunu/Ayere axis in Kogi/Ondo.
“The actual thing that you saw on social media happened in between those two communities, and we have been raising alarm that in places where we don’t have grassroots local security that we can work with, we have been having issues, but we are happy, however, that they joined and collaborated with us and the search still continues.
“As against the backdrop of the sharp decline of herders’ destruction of farmland in the northern part of the state, we have an increase in the number of herders-farmers clashes, and these are actually the areas where we have security breaches,” he said.
