Is there not a cause?

By Segun Gbadegesin

In the wisdom of the elders, “ejo la a ko, a kii ko ija” (It is better to learn how to state your case well than to learn how to fight an opponent). For, if you are able to state your case well to prospective adjudicators, thus helping them to understand the justice of your cause, fighting may be unnecessary.

Thus, it was in the days that King Saul was bombarded by the Philistines, and he felt overwhelmed despite his fame as a superior warrior, that David, a young herdsman from the house of Jesse offered to help. It was an unusual offer. He wasn’t visibly prepared for war. He was in his shepherd’s robe. He was sent to the camp with supplies to his older brothers who did not take kindly to his poking his nose into an affair that was none of his business. David’s response was direct and on point: Is there not a cause?

Israel was under siege. The army of the “uncircumcised” was defying the army of the God of Israel. For David, that was the cause. And it called for an effect, namely, those who could must show up with help. And as Malcolm Gladwell brilliantly explains in his book, David and Goliath, though we are used to the popular fiction of David just having a sling and a few stones, the depth of his expertise in the field of battle, including his specialization in the use of sling was beyond reproach. And as the story ended, Goliath underestimated it to his peril. Lesson: Do not underestimate the strength that your adversaries with a life and death choice facing them bring to the battle that you initiate.

Twelve years ago, Mallam Umaru Musa Yar’Adua was the President. During his short presidency, the country did not experience the long stretch of insecurity that has become its lot since 2013. Boko Haram was just beginning to emerge but not in its current demonic and deadly form. The Southwest was relatively peaceful, and PDP was in control of five states excluding Lagos. Though a majority of the zone’s politically active residents clamored for true federalism and state police, no action was taken beyond usual releases and rallies. Beyond the strength of the belief that true federalism is the most effective system to advance the development of the country and its people, there was no life and death choice in the matter at that time. There was not a cause.

Fast forward to mid-2019, and the visually blind could sense the trouble the Southwest was in, if nothing was done. Kidnappers were on the loose. Armed robbery was on the rise. Cultists were kings of the night and day. There was hardly a day that news of gory killings on the highways did not send chilling alerts to residents with worries about who may be next? Many abandoned traveling on the highways. It was in the midst of these that Afenifere Leader, Pa Fosoranti’s daughter, Mrs. Funke Olakunrin, was brutally killed in broad daylight along Benin-Ore road. Naturally, Yorubaland was in a rude shock. And justifiably, the demand for government action to protect the people grew louder. After all, security is the foremost responsibility of government. And since the closest authority to the people are the state governors of the zone, they were the focus of their demand. Is there not a cause?

On this page on June 28, 2019, I observed that security must be a coordinated effort on the part of the governors and the people, that the various cases of violent crime had shown us that criminals do not respect state borders and that crime is easily transportable. Therefore, we expected our state governors to act in concert. They did! Is there not a cause? So what’s the fuss?

The 1999 Constitution, imposed by an unelected military regime, vested security of the entire country in the federal government’s police and the military forces. Yet, the same Constitution designates the state governors as Chief Security Officers (CSO) of their states and allocates security funds for this purpose. In their judgement as CSO, each came to the conclusion that the unacceptable wave of violent crime in the Southwest can only be effectively tackled by a coordinated effort on the part of all the governors. Thus, Operation Amotekun (Western Nigeria Security Network) was born to complement the efforts of the federal security infrastructure by providing needed intelligence, which can only be effectively sourced by locals. Is there not a cause?

But an officious Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF) can only see illegality in the efforts of a people to secure themselves and their land. Something must be terribly wrong here. Five of the governors that facilitated the birth of Amotekun are APC stalwarts and presumably presidential loyalists. Can they possibly reconcile themselves to their government’s criminalization of their efforts? The discussions prior to the launching of the security outfit included the Office of the Inspector General. The governors were insistent from the beginning that they were only complementing the federal security operations in the zone. Pray, what is illegal here?

Predictably, Amotekun is already having some consequences, some of them likely unintended. The Southwest has always been a political cesspool of colliding ambitions standing in the way of much needed unity. Suddenly, Amotekun has appeared as a unifier. First, there is an unusual bipartisan effort on the part of governors; and second, there is a buy-in by stakeholders including traditional rulers and religious leaders, many of whom have not always seen eye to eye. This unity of purpose is a testament to the heightened sense of insecurity generated mid-year 2019, and a readiness to embrace any promising agenda to stop it.

“But an officious Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF) can only see illegality in the efforts of a people to secure themselves and their land. Something must be terribly wrong here”

It is also true, however, that the intervention of the AGF has led to another unintended consequence, certainly on his part. For many years or decades, the Southwest has championed the cause of re-federalization in reaction to continued unitarization. This effort has been met by strong resistance on the part of unitarists. Amotekun was not in any way another effort in that direction. It was simply a desperately needed measure to secure a people traumatized on their highways and inside their domains by kidnappers, armed robbers and cultists as central government security forces proved ineffective.

To their surprise, however, an overbearing Leviathan at the center, through its Chief Law Officer decided to throw a spanner in the wheel of progressive security vehicle launched by the zone. Predictably, there was a unified defiant reaction to AGF’s sophomoric legal challenge. Why was this predictable even as political unity had been unpredictable for ages? Simply, it strikes at the core of the people’s humanity. Insecurity is a nonpartisan evil. To feel unsafe in one’s house has no party logo. Chiefs and commoners were kidnapped or killed in the height of the tension. The people saw the AGF’s intervention as an insensitive insult because it didn’t take their wellbeing into consideration, or worse, it could care less about it.

It is usual for the type of response from the federal government through the AGF to lead to an unintended consequence with a more far reaching outcome for the collective. Thus, there are now calls for an all-out struggle for the re-federalization of the nation. The rationale is simple. Citizens feel that they have been suffering and smiling for quite a long time even prior to 2015 when the present administration was inaugurated. The counterproductive goal of uniformity has been substituted for the noble task of unity. In the process, the diversity that was initially acknowledged to be our strength has been jettisoned on the altar of homogeneity. If a reasonable effort to secure the people in a zone which has been most accommodative of all comers would be declared illegal contrary to the spirit of the constitution which recognizes governors as the Chief Security Officers of their states, then, we might as well go the whole stretch for true federalism. This is where the defiance of an inconsiderate and unguarded pronouncement by the AGF is leading the country.

Surely, there is a cause.