By Festus Eriye
Until the dramatic intervention of the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, not many would have described the Western Nigeria Security Network codenamed Operation Amotekun, as the first step towards breaking up the country.
His declaration that the project was illegal as policing was the exclusive preserve of the Federal Government, conjured a crisis where there was none.
The Amotekun project grew out of a security crisis in the Southwest that has seen killer herdsmen and kidnappers sweeping through the region. Peaceful hamlets where violent incidents were few and far between suddenly became theatres for mindless bloodletting such that villagers became too frightened to go their farms.
For all their assurances and reassurances, the Nigeria Police were in no shape to provide adequate security for the people.
Matters came to ahead in July last year with the high-profile killing of the daughter of Afenifere leader, Chief Reuben Fasoranti, on a highway somewhere in the Ondo State.
As the region’s governors and political leaders beat a bush path to the old man’s door to console him, an angry citizenry demanded answers from a central government that only had canned words of comfort to give.
President Muhammadu Buhari could offer his ritual press statement and move on, but not so the governors whose territory had been turned into killing fields. As chief security officers of their states they had to come up solutions and their consultations produced the Amotekun concept.
It is inconceivable that they would have nurtured the project to the point of take-off without adequate consultations with the security agencies and political authorities in Abuja. This much has been confirmed by a couple of governors.
It can also be argued that were there serious misgivings on the part of the president and his closest advisers, promoters of the scheme would have been more circumspect before committing significant financial resources to the project.
So, rather than Malami’s constitution excuse, everything suggests that the sudden hostility from the centre has to do with politics and the morbid fear of a national break-up. It is an eerie coincidence that the controversy is boiling over exactly 50 years after the end of the civil war.
When a figure like former Kaduna State Governor, Balarabe Musa, who in the past made pretensions to being a progressive politician, makes the incendiary claim that Operation Amotekun is designed to bring about an Oduduwa Republic, you don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Miyetti Allah Kautal Houre – a faction of the Fulani socio-cultural organisation – even went as far as warning the Southwest that it should forget the presidency in 2023 if it presses ahead with the project.
But nothing about the promoters of Amotekun lends credence to these insinuations. All the governors are dyed-in-the-wool establishment types and anything but fire-eating revolutionaries or separatists. Seyi Makinde of Oyo State even belongs to the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) not given to making common cause with the APC.
Ondo State Governor, Rotimi Akeredolu, would be more concerned with securing a second term at this year’s governorship elections in his state, than in midwifing a secessionist movement to nowhere.
There is no sense in the region that the people’s heart’s cry at this point is the creation of a mythical Oduduwa homeland. If anything, the political alliance between the leading lights of the zone and key northern leaders like Muhammadu Buhari, remains strong and appears the most viable option for those who have ambitions at the national level in the near future.
Even the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC) which has been co-opted into Amotekun – for all its bluster – is anything but separatist. Whatever its roots, the maneuverings of its leadership have reduced it to little more than an organisation that provides enforcers for hire.
During the 2015 election campaigns, this same OPC – along with the supposedly separatist Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) – was in the vanguard of the ‘President Goodluck Jonathan must win’ movement.
With sweet promises of pipeline protection contracts ringing in their ears, OPC, MASSOB and similar groups in the Niger Delta, took to the streets to stage sometimes violent protests threatening mayhem if the electoral outcome was anything but a victory for the then incumbent.
Jonathan was head of a government sworn to preserving the unity of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Here you had supposedly ‘separatist’ organisations whose raison d’etre should be the opposite openly campaigning against what they stood for! And someone would have us believe that OPC is working for the creation of Oduduwa Republic. Perhaps in their dreams!
These groups are largely opportunistic and not separatist. They are rebels with causes that provide them meals. They are useful for those who whip up political mischief, but shouldn’t worry anyone truly concerned about the corporate existence of this country.
IPOB’s embrace of the project is predictable and understandable. It gives it comfort to imagine that another region is squaring up to its hated foe – the Federal Government. It doesn’t matter whether its fantasy is different from reality in this case – anything would do for propaganda sake.
This controversy is needless drama. Amotekun has become ammunition for mischief-makers and Malami’s meddling has weaponised it. In the Southwest, what would have been just another security operation has become a regional cause celebre which must be defended at all cost. It is now welded to ethnic pride.
If you oppose it, you will pay a price down the line because you will be profiled as a sell-out. If you support it, you could be caricatured in certain parts of the country as an ethnic jingoistic.
It didn’t have to come to this for something that was simply about keeping a people whose government had failed to do so, safe.
“This controversy is needless drama. Amotekun has become ammunition for mischief-makers and Malami’s meddling has weaponised it.”
I suspect that it would take more than Malami’s decree to kill this idea whose time has come. Before he intervened, governors from the North and East had spoken of making similar arrangements to tackle insecurity in their regions.
Truth be told, the Nigeria Police and other security agencies need urgent help to deal with today’s challenges. They are not fit for purpose in today’s world of killer herdsmen, kidnappers, ritual killers and other hitherto unknown criminal activity.
To oppose something that would help because of a wrongheaded notion of its legality is totally unacceptable. The ones who escalated this matter must deescalate it without further ado. The key players all belong to APC and should be able to work out a reasonable compromise.
If they don’t, they would be sending out unhelpful signals of distrust and disunity in the ruling party.
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