Amotekun: The missing conversation- By Ayo Olukotun

The setting up of the paramilitary organisation called Amotekun is illegal and runs contrary to the provisions of the Nigerian law”

Abubakar Malami (SAN). Attorney General and Minister of Justice, The PUNCH, January 15, 2020

“One thing is clear; laws are not made in the office of the Attorney General of the Federation. He is only meant to interpret the law”.

-Ondo State Governor and Chairman of the South-West Governors’ Forum, Rotimi Akeredolu (SAN), The PUNCH, January 15, 2020

Once again, barely a few weeks after the heated debate that attended the denial of bail and consequent invasion of court proceeding regarding the Omoyele Sowore saga, the country is back to another season of disquiet. In the eye of the storm once more is the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr Abubakar Malami (SAN), who recently read the Riot Act to governors and leaders of the South-West by declaring the regional security initiative under the sobriquet of Amotekun an illegal outfit. The opening quote featuring the declaration, and the response to it, say it all: the tenor of the discussion is heated, tense, and volatile.

The statement by Malami conveyed a high-handed position, and almost seems to gloat, concerning a fundamental issue of national security and governance. It makes one to wonder whether this is the way and manner in which issues of the moment should be handled at the highest levels of government. Amotekun apart, no one will contest that after a season of modest reprieve on the security front, there has been an escalation of insecurity taking the shape of banditry, armed robbery, and the like on major highways across the country. The latest of this is the attack by gunmen on the Emir of Potiskum on Wednesday, in which six people were killed. Before then, various acts of kidnapping had been perpetrated in several states, including the South-West. Only on Tuesday, three persons were abducted at Alamo village, on the Ibadan-Iwo Road located in the Olaoluwa Local Government Area in Osun State.

Some of these cases go unreported, but not many will forget the sensational murder on July 12, last year, of the daughter of the Afenifere leader, Chief Reuben Fasoranti, Mrs Funke Olakunri, on the Ondo-Ore highway. Emotions, outrage, panic, and paranoia across Yoruba land trailed that incident, even as it tended to validate statistics earlier churned out about terrorist cells in forests, and hideouts in most of Yoruba land, numbering over a thousand. One of such yet unverified report claimed that armed herdsmen, some of whom allegedly speak French, were captured on satellite images in surveillances conducted by a Yoruba socio-cultural group. The death of Olakunri was followed by several kidnapping incidents on various interstate roads across what used to be the Western Region. Even if the outcry that followed these events exaggerated their occurrences, it would have been unwise and imprudent for the governors and leaders in the states affected to have closed their eyes to a clear and present danger.

Plainly and in the public glare, this was the context for the creation of Amotekun, which was the aftermath of two security summits convened by the Development Agenda for Western Nigeria Commission. It is hard to believe that any government official in Nigeria, elected or appointed, is unaware of this backdrop. In the weeks leading to the establishment of Amotekun, consultations and a flurry of diplomatic initiatives took place between the Inspector General of Police and Yoruba governors such as Dr. Kayode Fayemi. Could it be that Malami waited for the outfit to be launched before delivering his legal sledge hammer which has now stirred up another round of controversy? Does he believe that merely declaring a burgeoning institution such as Amotekun, founded on fears, anxieties of the majority of the people affected, and on the felt need to respond to what has become an emergency, illegal, exhausts the issues? Some of the governors involved in this innovation must have been the AGF’s seniors at the bar, and it beggars the imagination to believe that he could not have called any of them to discuss the issues about which he went to town. The elongating drama raises the issue of the ends of power and statecraft in the context of the need to resolve existential problems such as insecurity which stares Nigeria in the face. If the goal of power is not to simply parade one’s position, or the ability to ask others to shut up, but to resolve and to amend, creatively, the human condition, then it must include leaders and servants of the people putting heads together as a team to innovate above the fray.

It may also be that intra-ruling party conflicts have reached such a stage that even in the midst of danger and threat to national security, state officials will still rather give orders to elected personnel, rather than join them in resolving challenging dysfunctions. As a nation, we are fast losing the art of overture and becoming more and more narrow and exclusivist than ever before. Otherwise, we will not so easily jettison policy making informed by consensus building and stakeholder commitment. The conversation that our leaders across the tiers of government ought to have had before now is how to ensure, following the inability of the police to successfully tackle a lingering security jinx, that creative solutions such as regional security outfits, grounded in necessity have the backing of the law. Such suggestions as the state Houses of Assembly, giving legal backing to the institution ought to have been a natural part of this conversation.

If, for example, to look at another dimension of the argument, the leaders of the South-West had folded their arms and trusted meekly in incompetent institutions, would the citizens and history have forgiven them if the place becomes another killing field?

The argument often made that the rate of crime is still the lowest in the South-West is besides the point, unless it is being suggested that it will be better for the people to wait for the situation to grow from bad to worse before advancing policy initiatives. The growing furore over the AGF’s legal clampdown, which will of course be contested in court, does not convey the impression that our leaders are fully conscious and fully conversant with what Nigerians are passing through. Wise nations do not wait for Armageddon to fall before they think outside the box to avert doomsday. Those who are still analysing whether Amotekun is state police through the back door are not factoring how much more Nigerians can bear the scourge of insecurity, among other governance woes, before coming up with devices that can rescue them. Instead of a protracted legal impasse over Amotekun. The federal and state governments should combine their weapons, currently directed at each other to resolve the issues in the interest of lessening the human misery index around the country. The missing conversation which should have been about how to get Nigeria working, in the face of crippled institutions, should now become the dominant agenda in national discourse. Rather than wrangle, we should use the opportunity to ease suffering and ameliorate hardship.

PUNCH.