Amotekun, Shege-ka-fasa and foolish, deadly imitation

By Idowu Akinlotan

Last Wednesday, the amorphous Coalition of Northern Groups (CNG) announced the formation of a regional security outfit called Shege-Ka-Fasa (Hausa term for ‘I dare you’) to tackle banditry and all forms of criminality in the region. It is an imitation of Operation Amotekun (Western Nigeria Security Network) launched a few weeks ago to controversial reception by the federal government.

Its sponsors, who concede that unlike Operation Amotekun, they are non-state actors, disclosed that their outfit would do the following, among other things: “In addition to performing general complementary tasks for enhancing security in the region, the outfit shall also coordinate operations against the influx of hard drugs to the North, take steps to neutralize all centres of gravity for the supply, manufacturer and distribution of such drugs and other dangerous substances.

Coordinate vigilance to check and expose illegal arms trade, supply channels and possession and guard against the theft and illegal traffic in kids and other vulnerable sections of the northern population as well as expose operations of fraudsters like the Yahoo boys whose ill-gotten wealth forms part of the source of funding for the drug and arms trade.”

Operation Amotekun, despite being a group initiative to combat crime and restore the Southwest region to the normality it had enjoyed for decades, is still hamstrung by federal opposition and general suspicion. Operation Shege-Ka-Fasa is strictly the initiative of a coalition of youths who enjoy probably some covert support from a few undisclosed quarters.

It has been repudiated by critical stakeholders in the North. Not only does it not enjoy support from governments in the region, it does not make sense for any group of non-state actors to band themselves together and assume omnibus responsibility for peace and tranquillity on behalf of the states in the region. It is unlikely to go the distance, regardless of the covert support it has garnered from certain quarters.

In the Southwest, Operation Shege-Ka-Fasa is viewed as a bad imitation to give Operation Amotekun a bad name. Amotekun advocates suspect that the absurdity surrounding the hasty formation of the informal security outfit in the North could give the federal government the pretext to become more intransigent to other regional security outfits.

Sponsors of Operation Shege-Ka-Fasa have been careful not to denigrate other regional efforts, but no one is fooled about its motives — to imitate Amotekun to death. They know there is no way they can get the regional assent necessary to entrench their unrealistic outfit and get it running. And they know they cannot fund it without the northern states signing in on it.

However, as foolish as Operation Shege-Ka-Fasa might sound, and notwithstanding the impossibility of getting the North to embrace and fund it, it will not be the last challenge to a republic that has proved supremely self-destructive and incompetent to sustain itself or maintain law and order.