The Ondo State Government has said that the 42 young men from the northern states who stormed Okitipupa Local Government Area of the state last week would be returned because they posed security risk to the state.
Chief Adetunji Adeleye,theCommander of Amotekun Corps in the state, Chief Adetunji Adeleye disclosed this on Sunday, saying the decision was in the best interest of the people.
The arrival of the 42 young men created unnecessary tension in the town which made the state government to intervene.
According to the Amotekun commander, disclosed that an agent of the invaders claimed that they belonged to an NGO.
He said: “In the last three days, there have been issues relating to the invasion of the state by alleged Fulani men. Our intelligence showed us the influx of some people especially to Okitipupa Local Government area of the state. So, we monitored and we found out that they converged in front of the army barracks in Okitipupa.
“They were there for a couple of hours and at that point we tried to find out what their mission is, but because they couldn’t give satisfactory explanations we moved them to our local office first in Okitipupa to try to debrief them and from the debriefing at Okitipupa, we had to move them to the state headquarters for proper debriefing.
“When they arrived, we profiled them and we found out that they are primarily from two major states, that’s Kano and Jigawa states. The mission that they claimed they came for we found out that is not too clear and upon profiling we found out that majority of them don’t even know how they got to where they got to. All they were told is they were going for training. Training for who, by who or whatsoever, they do not know.
“But from detailed investigation, we were able to narrow it down to their sponsors. The sponsors happened to also claimed that they belong to an NGO, that they contracted out the training to a consultant who was supposed to train their men. They said they were going to train them as security guards.
“Right now, we look at them as security risk to the state, and at this point, we invited the sponsors, the head of the NGO and Chairman of the board. They’ve also offered explanation. But we feel that we should let the people of Ondo State know that there is no crisis in Okitipupa Local Government. The way it was portrayed was as if some hoodlums or militants had taken over.”
He reassured the people of the state that government was firmly on ground in conjunction with other security agencies.
He advised the people of the state to go about their businesses, saying, “we have ensured that our intelligence unit had covered the entire state and we’ll alert the public on any wrong move.”
