As part of efforts to tackle the security challenges in Nigeria, the Northern part of the country has followed the lead of the South West’s Amotekun in creating a security outfit.
The Coalition of Northern Groups (CNG) on Wednesday unveiled Northern Regional Security Initiative, codenamed ‘SHEGE KA FASA’.
Shege ka Fasa which means ‘I dare you’, was unveiled with symbol of a roaring lion (Amotekun is represented by a Leopard).
Addressing a press conference shortly before unveiling their outfit, the CNG said that for the past 12 years, the North had struggled with disabling challenges that include dwindling economy, and rising poverty.
Spokesperson for the group, Abdul-Azeez Suleiman, said that the security challenges manifested in 2008 in the form of a deadly insurgency from the Northeast and within a short time, spread to other parts of the region and virtually turned the entire region into a battlefield.
“A new dimension was introduced to the farmers/herders conflict which gradually deteriorated into an uncontrollable proportion and deepened the artificial rift between communities in the region,” the CNG said.
“This trend suddenly metamorphosed into a deadly armed banditry and kidnapping for ransom which is recycled for arms and drugs. This is in addition to another frustrating trend of the theft and forced trafficking in northern children to other parts of the country for reasons that are largely dubious.
“The culmination of these security challenges has for the past decade turned the entire region into a house of horror with violent killings reported on a daily basis, communities displaced with formal and informal IDP camps spreading across the region.
“The situation today, on most northern highways, innocent travelers are waylaid, robbed and abducted, towns and villages attacked and sacked by bandits who have created an atmosphere of palpable fear across the region.
“As the situation grows more desperate by the day with the North as the most porous and vulnerable, with northerners as the most distressed and estranged.”
CNG stressed that it is absolutely impossible to expect that communities would continue to fold their arms while criminals invade their abodes, kill, abduct and displace them.
“If the state governments and other leaders of the region fail to take action to protect the region the way their southern counterparts are doing, CNG is willing to follow through with all the processes of obtaining the required legal backing for the outfit from the relevant federal authorities.
“We resolved to formalise this request by writing to the governors through the Northern Governors Forum and to the leaderships of traditional, religious and cultural institutions in the region
“By this, today we unveil the symbols for the Shege Ka Fasa outfit which would be formally inaugutated in the coming few weeks when all necessary legal processes might have been completed or formally adopted and ratified by the northern states governors,” Sulieman said.
Recall that Amotekun was launched on January 9, by South-West Governors.
Also, eastern Nigeria will be having its own security outfit soon.
“Every region has their own peculiarities and we have formed our own joint security task force and we have written to the federal government,” Chairman of South-East Governors Forum and Ebonyi State Governor, David Umahi had said.
(C) Control TV 2020.
