Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State on Monday announced the inauguration of a task force to tackle insecurity in the state.
The task force which is being chaired by the governor has the Director of Security at the office of the Head of Service as its Secretary.
Other members of the task force include the Chief of Staff, Commissioner for Local Government, Commissioner for Information, Commissioner for Budget and Economic Planning, and also the Commissioner for Special Duties, the Special Adviser on Security; DG Operation Burst and the DG Amotekun.
“You are welcome to war room created by the government of Oyo State. Because of the challenges that we are apparently facing, security-wise, at the exco meeting of last Tuesday, we set up a State Security Task Force and the members are who you are seeing.
“I will be chairing the Task Force. We have the Chief of Staff, Commissioner for Local Government, Commissioner for Information, Commissioner for Budget and Economic Planning, and also the Commissioner for Special Duties.
“We also have as members of this task force the Special Adviser on Security; DG Operation Burst and the DG Amotekun. The secretary of this Task Force is from the office of the Head of Service, the Director of Security”, Makinde said.
The governor said the state government needed to be on top on the security situation in a daily basis, adding emergency meetings could be called any time the need arose.
“This is our inaugural meeting and it is similar to the Task Force we set up when COVID-19 just broke out. We think we are supposed to be on top of the security situation almost on a daily basis. Scheduled meetings for this force will hold on a weekly basis and you should expect to be briefed once we are done with our weekly meeting.
“We also hope that we can call an emergency meeting anytime depending on the security situation. The members have been carefully selected. The Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Matters, for instance, is supposed to be our link with our traditional institutions and with the local government areas, stakeholders at the local government levels”, he said.
He therefore solicited the support of all and sundry for the success of the task force.
The governor said:“We want to take this opportunity to ask for support from our people, from the traditional institution to our political stakeholders and also the different ethnic nationalities that are residents of Oyo State. We do not support ethnic profiling. We are looking for criminals and we know that if we are not careful, what goes around will come around.
“We have been hearing about the kidnapping of school children and their teachers and we do not that to happen in Oyo State. So, we are seeking for every support that we can get.”