Amotekun: Good Thinking, Bad Product?

After decades of general insecurity and apparent helplessness on the part of the Nigeria Police and other security organizations, different sections of the world’s most populous Black nation now seem to have lost faith in the ability of the regular security forces to restore peace and order in the land.
Recent attempts to rejig Nigeria’s security apparatchik have failed principally because President Muhammadu Buhari and his All Progressives Congress (APC) government are still playing deaf to all the calls for an immediate replacement of the nation’s service chiefs.
While the government prevaricated, Boko Haram, ISWAP, cattle rustlers, Fulani herdsmen, armed bandits, kidnappers, rapists, cultists and other criminal gangs became more daring in their various onslaughts against the rest of society.
The resultant resort to self-help has since found expression in the formation of neighbourhood vigilantes, state security outfits and now, regional police.
The Western Nigeria Security Network (WNSN) codenamed Operation Amotekun is about the first of any such successful attempts at registering a regional security outfit in Nigeria.
So far, Amotekun appears like a well conceived antidote to the current spate of insecurity in the country and is fast becoming the prototype for all other geo-political zones except perhaps the core North which insists that the proposed South West brand of regional policing is targeted at migrant Fulani cattle herders.
On its part, the Federal Government had, ab initio, opposed the formation of Amotekun as an independent regional security apparatus. Speaking through the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami (SAN), the government cited Article 45, Schedule 2 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) as having placed the nation’s policing on the exclusive list. Malami, however, said that the government would allow state and regional participants on the basis of a newly proposed community policing architecture.
Under the new arrangement, as was later explained by the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Mohammed Adamu, the Federal Government will recruit about 40,000 Nigerians as Special Constables drawn from their immediate communities of residence, regardless of whether they are indigenes of such communities or not. They will be trained, attired in the usual police uniform and function in the same way as the regular police; except that their duties will be mainly to gather intelligence reports for which they will be paid a monthly allowance.
Going by this concept, therefore, Amotekun and such other future regional outfits are expected to fall into the community policing system only to the extent of sharing intelligence, arresting and handing over any crime suspects to the nearest police station for further investigation and possible prosecution.
Again, another equally aggrieved group and Mallami’s co-travellers, the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN), hardly helped matters when it threatened that the North will deny the South West zone a shot at the Presidency in 2023 should its governors still proceed with the establishment of Amotekun.
But the South West governors, who reportedly conceived the idea of Amotekun in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, in June 2019 at a meeting of the Development Agenda for Western Nigeria (DAWN) commission, would have none of that.
Their meeting with Malami, a few days after launching Amotekun on January 9, 2020, did not appear to have ceded anything to the Federal Government or Miyetti Allah. And this was quite evident from Malami’s posture during a presss conference after the meeting. The AGF’s countenance was, to say the least, a study in icy self-possession as he stood among the obviously gloating Yoruba governors. In short, he looked like one who had just met his match in the Ondo State Governor, Rotimi Akeredolu, another SAN and chairman of South West Governors’ Forum.
Besides the South West geo-political zone, only the North West is said to have raised its own regional security force, codenamed Operation Sege Ka Fasa.
Before these inter-state security co-operations, internal security had degenerated to the level of states helping themselves by forming their own vigilante corps For example, in Lagos State there is the Lagos Neighbourhood Safety Corps (LNSC), Borno has the Civilian Joint Task Force, there is the Hisbah Corps (Sharia Police) in Kano, Operation Rainbow in Plateau while Enugu floated the Forest Guards.
Here in Rivers State, the Governor Nyesom Wike administration, in 2018, established the Rivers State Neighbourhood Safety Corps Agency (aka Neighbourhood Watch) with about 3,000 vibrant youths recruited and already being trained by the Nigeria Police at Nonwa in Tai Local Government Area when the Federal Government suddenly clamped down on the initiative, accusing the state of providing training beyond what is usually allowed for such paramilitary engagements. But those who saw beyond their noses simply sympathized with an obviously paranoid Federal Government, especially in the face of the approaching general elections in 2019.
However, the Pan-Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF) has joined other regional socio-cultural organizations across Nigeria to urge their governors in the South South geo-political zone to quickly establish a regional security outfit in the shape of Amotekun.
PANDEF, an umbrella body of traditional rulers, elder statesmen and other stakeholders in the Niger Delta was reported to have made the call at an expanded National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting recently.
There is, however, this fear that PANDEF’s request may not be quick in coming, especially considering the latest pronouncement on the matter by the Delta State Governor and Chairman of South South Governors’ Forum, Senator Ifeanyi Okowa, that the governors would rather key into the nation’s approved community policing template.
Commenting on the South South scenario, a Port Harcourt-based security operative who only wished to be identified as Ehiogie from Edo State said much as he liked the bold statement being made by the Yoruba governors with the launch of Amotekun, it is still early to see how applicable the idea will be to other zones; more so now that it is yet to have the necessary legal framework for its implementation.
Ibiso Elvis-Amgbare is a private school teacher also resident in Port Harcourt. According to her, “What the Yorubas are doing with Amotekun is enough to tell President Buhari that he has never been sincere in tackling Boko Haram and Fulani herdsmen attacks against ordinary citizens of this country and can no longer be trusted to do so, going forward.
“I hope that Amotekun succeeds and for our governors in the South South to adopt same in order to stave off any dislodged miscreants who may be tempted to relocate from such zones to this area,” she prayed.
Pan-Igbo organisation, Ohaneze Ndigbo, Middle Belt Forum and a number of other ethnic-based groups have tried to close ranks with their region’s governors, especially since the advent of Amotekun. The only sticking point is that whereas most of these groups have urged for speedy assemblage of their own equivalent of the Yoruba police outfit, apparently in response to the fast deteriorating security situation in their respective domains, their governors seem to be tactfully delaying the process while awaiting the eventual outcome of Amotekun.
Thus far, Amotekun’s formation can be said to have been popular, consistent, fearless and quite methodical. Nearly all prominent Pan-Yoruba groups have lent their support to the agency and its promoters. From Afenifere, whose chieftain and former Secretary to the Federal Government, Chief Olu Falae, was once abducted by suspected herdsmen, to Odu’a Peoples Congress (OPC), Yoruba World Congress (YWC) and Yoruba Council of Elders (YCE), there has been serious condemnation of the Federal Government’s attempt to subjugate the WSNS by appointing its representatives into the governing council of the regional agency.
What’s more, the initial equipment outlay by the South West governors for Amotekun’s take-off is as intimidating as it is impressive. According to reports, each of the six governors was billed to contribute 20 security patrol vehicles and 100 motorcycles; but Oyo State Governor, Seyi Makinde, opted to donate 33 vans, making it a total of 133 operational vans and 600 motorcycles.
Also, even if Amotekun will be run by a governing board, there is no losing sight of the fact that the South West already has a generalissimo in the person of the former OPC warlord and now, Aare Ona Kakanfo of Yorubaland, Chief Ganiyu Adams. His influence will surely rub off on the regional outfit.
Reports also have it that the outfit has already recruited 1320 operatives from Lagos, Ekiti and Osun states armed with Dane guns like local hunters. Question is: What can these locally made firearms accomplish against the AK-47 wielded by the Fulani herdsman, kidnapper or armed robber? Or, better still, should such encounter result in the deployment of unorthodox combat methods, can the Amotekun cops boast of superior charms and amulets against their mostly itinerant adversaries?
Amotekun is good, no doubt. And its promoters have also demonstrated their individual and collective abilities to think outside the box when it mattered most. But what happens after now? How well will the likes of Amotekun be managed elsewhere such that will not lead Nigeria into deeper crisis than they intend to avert? Only time will tell.

By: Ibelema Jumbo