By Idowu Akinlotan
After many false steps, proponents of the controversial Southwest security apparatus, Western Nigeria Security Network (WNSN), aka Operation Amotekun, have had their tentative way. From being stridently opposed to it, a response informally and haughtily communicated to regional leaders by Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) and Justice minister Abubakar Malami, the federal government has in principle approved a modified version of the regional security organ.
The Southwest governors who met with representatives of the presidency were neither averse to the meeting, which took place last Thursday, nor upset with the modifications, which seemed to compensate for the awkward spadework that accompanied its founding. It is strange that any kind of approval was needed, given the fact that Nigeria theoretically subscribes to federalism; but too many loose ends were created by the hurry and publicity with which the very popular measure was adopted that few observers paid any close attention to the details.
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo chaired the meeting. Other than the governors, in attendance were the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Mohammed Adamu, and Mr Malami. The knotty issues and questions that entangled Amotekun were too well known to make the meeting protracted. The parameters were quickly agreed upon, and the Southwest governors were sent on their way to make amends.
The meeting was not bad-tempered, and Amotekun did not get short shrift. After the hullabaloo of the previous week, and the acrimonious debate and posturing and political baiting that followed the launching of the security organ, it was remarkable that the pressures were so quickly dissipated. The Southwest governors appeared even relieved, the federal government seemed conciliatory, and the public, particularly the Southwest public, seemed bemused. What was all the hoopla about?
Two things were uppermost in the minds of those who met on Amotekun last Thursday. One, the governors must return to their states and give legal teeth to the proposed security organ; and two, that there is no constitutional anchor to regionally legislate such a body. The governors will, therefore, find a sensible way to achieve their common desire of securing the region without gouging out the eyes of the constitution.
They seemed to give the impression that they could find an ingenious way out of that logjam. But whether their ingenuity would diminish the practicability and potency of Amotekun is a poser they will be hard put to give a ready answer now. More, south-westerners seem to have one idealistic view or the other of Amotekun; would they in the final analysis be satisfied with the compromise reached between their governors and the federal government? No one can tell at the moment.
One thing is, however, clear. The furore surrounding Amotekun has revealed many disturbing and unsettling things about the federal government, Southwest regional politics, and the health of Nigerian politics and issues surrounding national peace and stability. These revelatory signs indicate just how poorly developed Nigerian politics is, despite two failed attempts at democracy and more than 20 years into a rather vibrant Fourth Republic. The Fourth Republic may enjoy an unbroken spell lasting decades, but it has not seemed to generate enough oxygen of rich democratic experience that should therapeutically course through the entire body politic, particularly the sinews of the constitution. In discussing these revelatory signs, Nigerians will hopefully find the knowledge and vision to reconsider the building blocks of their republic and find the discipline to recalibrate their constitution and their national raison d’être.
In any discussion of the deep-seated problems Amotekun has fortuitously exposed, the federal government, or more critically, the presidency, must merit the first mention. Amotekun was in the news for months, and in the past few weeks became very controversial because of its implication, rightly or wrongly, for unity, ethnic politics, regionalism, federalism, and even secessionism. Whether before it became deeply controversial or after, the federal government or one or two of its agencies did nothing more than enter into discussions with advocates of the regional security organ. The government controls the national security council, but there was no indication that it ever tabled the subject for discussions. The president himself, who was expected to have an overarching view of national security and stability, gave no indication that he knew what to do with the matter. Amotekun was dominant in the news for weeks, sometimes accompanied by fiery rhetoric about its constitutionality and practicability in a multiethnic and multireligious society, so no government agency or elected leader could feign ignorance of the existence of the proposal. Yet, nothing was done or said about it. There were indications that the Southwest governors sought to meet minds with the presidency, but nothing came out of that too. It was only when a date for its launching had been set that the AGF cast doubt over its constitutionality. That is not the way to run a country or a government.
If the presidency was unsure how to respond, or even feared that its intervention might be construed as inimical to federalism, or had not been approached for discussions by the Southwest governors, did it ask for a meeting with the sponsors of Amotekun, and through its security agencies gauged the feelings of the region to weigh the popularity of the proposed security organ? In the months and possibly years ahead, the federal government will have to find a more balanced and healthier way of looking at some of these issues that have implications for federalism and national stability. It has not shown that it can competently do such examinations, or impress it upon the minds of apprehensive Nigerians that it has the capacity to even reflect and take a futuristic view of potentially divisive issues. But it must, sooner or later. If it does not, it will lose the initiative. Amotekun nearly sundered interethnic relations in the country. If the government is honest, it must acknowledge that the danger is not yet over.
The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), must also share in the blame for the clumsy way the government, their government, has managed the issue of Amotekun. Not only has the government incompetently staffed and managed the country’s security system, there is no indication at all that the self-absorbed APC, as a party, has found a way to connect with its elected officials to make powerful input into exigent national issues. Amotekun is the brainchild of five Southwest states controlled by the APC and one PDP-controlled state.
Three of the APC states were enthusiastic about the proposed security network, and two displayed grudging acceptance; but overall, they all acknowledged the need for Amotekun and were too sensible not to know that it was risky to disavow it. The national secretariat of the party should have waded in, meet minds with the Southwest APC governors, advise the federal government about the potential of the proposal to generate a ripple effect on the party, and find ways to manage it without damaging its future electoral prospects. Instead, it kept quiet and allowed the matter to seethe uncontrollably. Surely, there is more to running a party than seeking to change its working committee or fighting themselves.
But by far the most engaging in the Amotekun brouhaha is the Southwest itself, a region so fractured and regicidal that it sometimes gives the impression that it is inured to its political environment. Amotekun undoubtedly accords with their conception of federalism, and triggers their innermost and nostalgic feeling of who they are, how they conducted and advanced themselves between 1952 and 1959, and their regret about the general underdevelopment they have been constrained by their association with the rest of Nigeria to endure. Until Amotekun was launched, it seemed to many south-westerners that it was a fanciful project of uncertain possibilities, one which, even to a faction of Afenifere, was nothing but a dispiriting tokenism capable of vitiating the real demand for restructuring.
But once Mr Malami seemed to voice the federal opposition to the scheme, and seemed to lend weight and force to yet another disgraceful federal attempt to truncate a minimally and constitutionally permissible expression of federalist principles, the opposition to the government coalesced and support for Amotekun was galvanised. Worse, and instinctively, the eternally fractious region returned to its default mode of fighting one another at the same time as fighting outsiders or an oppressive federal government. There are on the whole two or so political tendencies in the region. Quickly, Amotekun became the lightning rod of that division, with one group unwisely and pugnaciously setting the boundaries no one must cross. They began to demand that their leaders shaped up or shipped out.
The lessons of history became, sadly, lost on them again. In their history, Ilorin was lost because of the divisions among them, while the Fulani advanced into their territory because of rivalry, suspicion and a lack of united vision regarding their past, present and future. Not having learnt enough lesson from their history, and deliberately twisting and conjuring history for the purpose of engendering scaremongering, they descended into abuse, acrimony, mischief and plain absurdity. Those outside the region who didn’t love Amotekun simply smiled. They had become the kryptonite of the Southwest. They knew instinctively where to turn the screw and get the stubborn and proud region fighting themselves. They knew how to get the squabbling and bickering Southwest to take its eyes off the ball. It is remarkable that for a region that claims to be so advanced in politics and civilisation, who knew the value of checks and balances while the English were still scurrying around over Magna Carta, and who have consistently decried the country’s unitary constitution, differences of opinion and tactics could become treasonable.
For the Southwest which claims to be very enlightened, how could they not appreciate that the first time a Yoruba man won a presidential poll was because he reached out, appeared less Yoruba than he really was, and propagated a secular redefinition of religion at the same time as exuding the most controversial iconoclasm that drove the Southwest up the wall. Before the Southwest again won the presidency in 1999, the victorious candidate had to almost repudiate his Yorubanness in order to appeal to more voters around the country. To, therefore, make Amotekun proof positive of a politician’s fidelity to south-western principles and values is not only childish and short-sighted, it is baffling that it even gained currency. Neither the North nor the East has been so immature and so pretentious. Amotekun is concerned with the survival, peace and security of the Southwest. Sadly and disgracefully, and because of a lack of reflection and in consonance with a strand of Southwest politics that elevates controversial issues into zero-sum games, it quickly became a plebiscite on who was more Oodua than the other.
Amotekun makes sense, and it is not unconstitutional. But as many analysts now realise, and as the Southwest governors have seemed to concede, it can be operated along a slightly different line than originally thought. It can be enabled by state laws, and made to run along lines that encourage regional security cooperation. If the leading proponents of Amotekun had widened their consultations, and had sponsored behind-the-scene debates about its conception and feasibility, they would probably have refrained from launching it before the enabling laws are put in place and its operational guidelines fine-tuned and showcased as examples of the Southwest’s thoughtfulness and thoroughness. There is clearly no killing or attenuating Amotekun. But it will be rejigged and eventually made to serve the purpose for which it was conceived, regardless of the reservations of a federal government that has woefully failed to secure the country and seems to be at sea over what to do next to return the country to its relatively peaceful and nostalgic past.
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