Arms’ proliferation, poor policing stimulating insecurity, Okei-Odumakin declares

Human rights activist, Dr. Joe Okei-Odumakin, has lamented that the proliferation of unlicensed firearms was fuelling the killings nationwide.

Okei-Odumakin spoke alongside fellow guest lecturer, Professor Dele Adetoye, in Ado-Ekiti, during the inaugural Comrade Bunmi Ojo Memorial Lecture.

Assailants had shot Ojo, ex-Governor Segun Oni’s personal assistant last year at a football-viewing centre in the Adebayo area of Ado-Ekiti.

Delivering the lecture titled: The Tragedy of the Murder of Comrade Bunmi Ojo: Implications for Youth Development and National Security, Odumakin also attributed the unwarranted killings in the country to poor policing.

Represented by the General Secretary of the Campaign for Democracy (CD), Ifeanyi Odili, she noted: “Another cause of his death is majorly traceable to poor policing in Nigeria because Nigeria is far below the United Nations’ standard of policing which is why we find ourselves in this critical security mess in Nigeria.

“Soon after the exit of the military and eventual return to democracy, firearms became a common commodity. People became so free to move around with guns, AK47, AK49 and pump-action unlicensed.

“This catastrophe that befell Bunmi Ojo will continue to skyrocket in Nigeria until our leaders sit together, speak to one another from their subconscious and inner minds with a view to outlawing the arbitrary use of guns before, during and after political campaigns.

“In fact, it is worthwhile to phase it out outright in our polity. In military era, you dare not carry kitchen-knife outside your homes how much more guns flying around the country.”

She further submitted that intolerance among politicians was one of the major obstacles to the nation’s nascent democracy.

Professor Adetoye had held that Nigeria’s distant and recent political and socioeconomic history was replete with proactive and productive riles by youths in nation-building and socio-economic political development of the country, which the deceased represented.