How Ondo State Government Deliberately Exposes Rural Dwellers To Attack Through Casualisattion And Underfunding of Amotekun Corps.

By Alaba Adeyemi |

The joy and the sense of relief that filled the hearts of Ondo State residents when the Amotekun Corps was established have now melted into a sense of despair as the morale of the men becomes weakened by government negligence, suppression of dissenting voices, and an uncertain future.

On the 11th day of August 2020, the Ondo State Government established the Ondo State Security Network, Codenamed Amotekun, as a solution to the incessant killing of farmers and rural dwellers across the state. The establishment was hailed as a master stroke that would permanently solve the problem.

Able-bodied men were hurriedly recruited and trained in makeshift training centres for six weeks and deployed to the field. They were not given any form of ranks, letter of appointment, or a clearly spelled-out letter of appointment.

Filled with passionate zeal to serve and protect their ancestral land, many of these men, who were initially placed on a 30,000 Naira monthly stipend, swung into action, arresting bandits, destroying terrorist camps, and criminal enclaves. Their hope that in due time everything will be taken care of and they will be treated like real public servants is now in tatters.

Disjointed establishment

On the 9th day of January 2020, governors across the southwest region came together to launch the outfit in Ibadan without a proper law in place in any of the states.

With the presidency represented by the then Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, breathing down their necks, the establishment was put in place without a proper legal, administrative, and logistics structure.

Issues such as the kind of weapon such an outfit can bear became a subject of debate that has lasted till today.

Despite all uncertainty the Ondo State Government assured the men that every issue related to their employment would be settled in due time.

Expectations turn into nightmare

When the men were recruited, unlike their colleagues in other states, none of them was given an employment letter; all they got was a document called a “warrant,” and that is all each one of them still has now as proof of their employment and contract with the Ondo State Government.

Every attempt made to demand this legitimate right has been met with a lack of attention.

Investigation by DNN Media revealed that the Ondo State Amotekun corps, unlike other southwest states, operates without a clearly defined salary structure; therefore, there is also no basic formula and plan for a severance package.

In August 2025, three of the officers, Abu Taiwo, Akinsipe Victor, and Ekujimi Victor, commenced a form of protest, releasing several videos on social media and demanding that men of the corps should be given employment letters and other benefits enjoyed by public servants.

They subsequently engaged the service of human rights lawyer Tope Temokun, who wrote to the Ondo State House of Assembly stating the demands of the men of the Ondo Amotekun.

The Ondo State House of Assembly received the petition but did not do anything significant with the petition.However on October 27^th, 2025 the commander of the corps, Adetunji Adeleye declared the three men wanted for allegedly “blackmailing” the organisation.

“All that you have seen on the social media on the 15 points they raised are all false allegations, and as we stand today, the three of them have been reprimanded.

They have been declared wanted and due diligence in handling such in a security environment where oaths of allegiance and secrecy to the state cannot be thrown away.”

Adetunji claimed that the men are acting in isolation and are sponsored by persons he didn’t name but provided no proof to counter the allegations raised by the men.

“We refuse to be dragged into the controversies surrounding each one of them because the fact remains that they are acting in isolation.

“The three of them have been suspended from the corps, and we are looking for them to come and answer as a way of giving them free access to criminal justice. If they are innocent, everybody the corps as an entity will not be dragged into social media controversy with such people that are acting in isolation.

“Especially now that we are sure and we have proof to show that they are being sponsored,” he said

The three men subsequently went into hiding.

From his hiding place, one of the men Victor Ekujimi continued to drop several allegations in series of video where he accused Adeleye of nepotism, corruption gun running and inflation of the number of officers of the corps.

“I saw a news headline where Adeleye claimed the 2,000 men have been deployed to keep Ondo State safe during the Salah celebration. It’s a lie; the entire men and women of the corps are not up to 2000. It’s all a lie. Ekujimi said

In what seems like an attempt to silence Ekujimi, two documents were circulated among officials of the corps. One of them is an apology letter supposedly written by him in 2021 for offences for which the details were left opaque.

I wish to sincerely apologise for all my gross misconduct and embarrassment to the Ondo State Amotekun Corps, the Commander, all the Officers and members of the Corps due to my unprofessional behaviors, uninformed decisions, assaults of officers, unprovoked attacks on public structures, unlawful destruction of private properties, unlawful protests, absenteeism, acts of gross insubordinations to the constituted authorities, among others.

“I hereby undertake to be of good character henceforth and to be a good ambassador of the Corps everywhere I find myself, either on official duty or otherwise. On behalf of the principal members of my family and wife (who have collectively accepted to subscribe to this letter and guarantee my undertaking), I hereby acknowledge that any act of gross misconduct, indiscipline, or violation of the Corps’ rules and regulations shall attract every necessary administrative consequence and application of the applicable legal action including criminal litigations for all the offences that are pending against me. I am committed to repairing any damage I caused and reimbursing any costs incurred by the Ondo State Amotekun Corps.

Again, I take full responsibility for all my faults, deeply regret my misconduct, and apologize for any harm caused to the Ondo State Amotekun Corps. I promise to be a better person and a cultured officer of the Corps. Please accept my sincere apology, as I want to assure you that this type of issue will never present itself again. “The letter stated.

The second documents also alleged Ekujumi to have committed various offences from minor offences to murder.

“Criminal acts and insurbordination of Julius Ekunjuni“

1. On 15th October 2021, he fought with his Coordinator Ifeniyi Olatokunbo and tore his uniform.
2. On Wednesday 11th August 2021, he fought with officer Aguda Banji, hit his ribs with stone which led him having fracture and stayed weeks in the hospital.
3. He left the State Headquarters to Okitipupa without permission and went to stab somebody to death claiming that the person stole his phone. The incident happened on 25th October 2021 and the Criminal Charge of Murder is still pending with the Police.”

The copy of the second documents obtained by this report was not signed by anyone. The “apology letter” was however signed by Ekujimi,one Reverend Ekujimi who claims to be the head of the family and another person whose name was not mentioned on the letter on 6th of December 2023.

Efforts were made to reach Ekujimi and his colleagues but it was not successful. However their legal representative,when asked to comment on the letter said ” they have been fabricating a lot of things but everything will be settled buly the court”.

Ondo Governemnt unperturbed

On 5th of December 2025 while commissioning the Amotekun control centre in Akure, Governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa expressed satisfaction with the leadership of Adetunji Adeleye. He also said that he won’t remove him as some persons were demanding.

The governor also used the opportunity to announce that additional 500 men will be recruited.

Temokun queried the intention of the Ondo State Government wondering why more men will be recruited when the old ones have not received employment letters.

“For the sake of those of those who may genuinely seek to know, Amotekun is not a voluntary para military club. It is not Boys’ Brigade. It is not Boy Scouts. It is a statutory security agency, created by law, funded with public money, empowered to arrest, detain, and collaborate with formal law enforcement. Amotekun is a creature of law, established by a law passed by the Ondo State House of Assembly. It is a formal, quasi-policing institution with defined powers, duties, disciplinary procedures, and statutory obligations. Its personnel are not volunteers or scouts; they are state-engaged operatives. As such, they are entitled to proper letters of engagement, service records, and the full rights of public employees. Statutory security agencies are not run on verbal engagement,” he said.

“Some of the issues raised by these ‘wanted” officers, beyond appointment letters, are issues of State concern, that touch on allegations of ghost workers, payroll irregularities, and incomplete personnel records, issues that have never been subjected to transparent audit or official explanation. Announcing new recruitment in the midst of these unresolved questions risks worsening administrative decay rather than resolving it,” he added.

Adeleye seems to be more interested in convincing the men of the corps that they do not need an employment letter. In a leaked audio of his conversation with men of the corps, he gave various reasons they can’t have an employment letter.

(You are shouting) Letter of appointment, letter of appointment, you don’t fall into the civil service structure. If you fall into the civil service structure and you don’t have a primary six or a school cert, {Secondary School Certificate}, you can be in the civil service. It is where your education stops that’s where your salary will stop. Number three, some of us who have previously retired, such as Ikunowa they can not come back into the structure as a full-blown civil servant. But the government employed you as ……branch of government. The government has employed you as a …. Amotekun is the only security agency of the Ondo State Government. Do not let them deceive you. Your warrant card, we have written on it, the power embedded in sections 5,6, and 7 of the Ondo State law entitles you to all that civil servants have and what paramilitary forces have. What else do you? Because they want to deceive you, we have now embossed the logo of the Ondo State Government on it. The card is now two times powerful as the previous one.”

However, the investigation revealed that the commander of the corps was issued a letter of appointment signed by the secretary to the Ondo State Government.

Morale low

An officer of the corps who spoke to this journalist lamented that many of the men in the corps are now frustrated and dejected as they do not know what the future holds for them and their children.

“We don’t know what is happening again; many of us are frustrated.”

Many of the men of the corps, which was established to fight banditry and kidnapping, now prefer to be deployed to towns where they arrest and extort commercial motorcycle riders or to provide security at events.

It’s now easier to find an Amotekun officer sitting in a roadside shed in Akure than to find them in communities they were originally intended to protect

The corps appears to also suffer from paucity of funds as they did not receive a kobo out of the 2.9 billion Naira budgeted for its capital expenditure for the year in the first nine months of 2025.

In 2024, only 258 million Naira was used for capital expenditure out of the 900 million budgets for that purpose, while the Ondo State Government splashed 1.9 billion Naira on the purchase of a bulletproof car for the governor and a luxury jeep for the secretary to the state government

The people suffer

In the last 15 months, the rate of kidnapping and killing of farmers has increased astronomically in Ondo State.

In April 2025, farmers from Ajagbusi, a community not more than 25 minutes’ drive from the governor’s office, brought three fresh corpses of their colleagues who were brutally murdered on their farms by suspected Fulani herdsmen.

This is not an isolated protest as another set of farmers from Aba Oyinbo had also protested, carrying five corpses of their colleagues killed by bandits overnight.

“Amotekun is no longer as active as before; it’s as if the men have abandoned the farmers to their plight,“ a resident said.

“I have abandoned my farm, in which I invested over two million Naira. It’s a painful decision that must be taken,” he added.

The general disposition of the Ondo State Government towards the safety of rural dwellers in the state was succinctly captured by the Special Adviser to the Ondo State Government on Security Matters, Olugbega Ale, on a radio program monitored by this journalist.

He affirmed that security is a collective business and asked what the farmers are doing to protect themselves.

“Security is everybody’s business. Our people want the government to come and build a police station in their homes. What are the farmers doing to protect themselves before calling on the government?”

“Anyone who wants to do farming should be asked what plan they have for security.

“In advanced countries, where there are sophisticated technologies like the internet, farmers usually have drones, firearms, and dogs, but our people want the government to do everything for them.”

He also told the farmers that they shouldn’t expect Amotekun to abandon securing Alagbaka (where the seat of government is located) and come to secure the rural areas.

Several unanswerd questions

Why has the Ondo State Government not issued the men of the Amotekun Corps a proper letter of appointment?

Why is the commander of the corps, who has a letter of appointment, denying his men appointment letters?

If Ekujimi actually committed murder and other serious crimes as alleged in those documents, why did the corps sweep such cases under the carpet?

How many crimes have been committed by the men of the corps against innocent citizens that have been covered up?

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This report was produced with support from Civic Media Lab under its Grassroots News Porject (GNP)