THE Assistant Secretary General, Yoruba Council of Elders, Alhaji Suleiman Salami, said Nigerians should not leave their security completely in the hands of the military and other security agencies because they could fail to defend them in the time of danger.
The 81-year-old spoke in a telephone interview with one of our correspondents in Osogbo on Sunday.
Salami said he agreed with the submissions of Danjuma and also urged Yoruba people to be prepared to defend themselves and their land from the rampaging herdsmen.
The YCE assistant scribe said, “The General is very right. It will be disastrous for people to be attacked and they fold their arms, expecting the government to defend them. If the government is not forthcoming, the people concerned must find a way to defend themselves.
“The President has kept quiet for a long time on the herdsmen atrocities. I recently told some South-West governors and Obas that if we did not prepare to defend ourselves, these herdsmen would just come one day and kill all of us.”
A former Minister of Defence, Lt. Gen.Theophilus Danjuma(retd.), had on Saturday at the maiden convocation of the Taraba State University, told Nigerians to defend themselves against killers, saying the Nigerian Armed Forces were not ready to defend them.
He had said, “There is an attempt at ethnic cleansing in the state (Taraba) and of course, some rural states in Nigeria, we must resist it. We must stop it. Every one of us must rise up. Our armed forces are not neutral. They collude with the bandits to kill people, kill Nigerians… If you are depending on the armed forces to stop the killings, you will all die one by one.”
However, the Minister of Defence, Mansur Dan-Ali, said Danjuma’s comment was “highly uncalled for,” and an invitation to anarchy, asking Nigerians to report any member of the armed forces suspected to be colluding with herdsmen.
