Afenifere and the Fulani Siege on Yorubaland

Oyo State recorded the ugly incident of the mass abduction of pupils and teachers last Friday. Kwara State is almost gone, with many towns and villages deserted. Osun State, which shares a boundary with Kwara, no longer sleeps with both eyes closed. Ondo State is gradually becoming the kidnapping headquarters of Yorubaland. Ekiti State fares no better in this season of infamy, just as Ogun State also suffers frequent attacks. Very soon, Lagos may join this axis of torment, and there will be nowhere left to hide.

Assessing the situation at the weekend, a section of Afenifere, the pan-Yoruba socio-political organisation, declared that Yorubaland is under siege. The group made the statement in response to the three coordinated attacks on schools in Oriire Local Government Area of Oyo State.

During the attacks, a member of staff was killed, while a principal and scores of pupils were abducted. The precision and coordination with which the criminals carried out the attacks lend weight to Afenifere’s conclusion that “Yorubaland is now under siege.” On that point, I cannot disagree with the group.

But that is where my agreement ends. Beyond the rhetoric about the South-West — once regarded as one of the country’s safest regions — now being ravaged by armed herdsmen, kidnappers and terrorists, Afenifere’s statement leaves much to be desired of a group the nation once looked up to for moral direction and political clarity.

How the group found it easy to place the blame at the doorsteps of the South-West governors and government while insulating the almighty Federal Government and the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, beats my imagination.

How a lengthy statement by Afenifere failed to trace when the rain began to beat Yorubaland, but found it convenient to interrogate the past security measures and facilities put in place and procured by the governors of the South-West region, shows very clearly that Afenifere is not ready to tell itself the home truth!

The elders of our land say: Àgbà tí kò ke’hùn sòrò, á ketan sáré (the elder who refuses to speak loudly when it matters will run with bow legs in his old age). This ageless admonition becomes more relevant with Afenifere and its posture over the Oyo State school abduction.

Any good student of Stylistics and Discourse Analysis will easily decipher that the factional Afenifere’s National Publicity Secretary, Jare Ajayi, who endorsed the statement issued by the group, cut the picture of a man who is afraid of hurting the power-that-be! The entire statement was blind to the crucial roles and responsibilities which the constitution and its fundamental principles confer on the president and the Federal Government, but chose to put the state governments on the spot.

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It became even worrisome when Afenifere, in the inconsequential reference it made to the Federal Government in the whole saga, went on a praise-singing orchestra to commend ‘the swift visit’ of the Inspector General of Police, Tunji Disu, to the crime scene following the kidnap incident. In that same breath, the group lambasted the South-West governors, when it submitted that: “The actions of South-West governors in recent times do not suggest that they appreciate the enormity of the responsibility they shoulder concerning the security of their land.” Haba!

We should understand this. Nobody says the South-West governors should not be made to account for their spending on security. Any governor, anywhere in the country, should be made to justify any money spent on security or any other social service.

But Afenifere exposed its fatal bias against the South-West governors when it added that “In view of the fact that the primary duty of government is the security and welfare of the people, governments in South-West states of Nigeria must prove that they are alive to their constitutionally assigned responsibilities. Everything must be done to ensure that no area in the region experiences attacks by kidnappers and bandits anymore….”

The above statement is in bad taste. Afenifere ought to know, or should be made to know that whatever Oyo State Government or any other state government provides to boost security is just complementary. The security of every inch of Nigeria is the responsibility of the Federal Government. That is what our unitary constitution says. And, this is why the president is called the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. No governor answers that appellation; no governor controls the police, or even the Civil Defence Corps. 

As of today, only the President has the sole responsibility to appoint Service Chiefs, the Inspector General of Police (IGP), and heads of other paramilitary forces. The appointment, posting, transfer and retention of Commissioners of Police are by the whims and caprices of the President through his appointed IGP. Nigeria runs a centralised police system. If anyone should be blamed for the level of insecurity in the nation, the president and the Federal Government should carry the can of blame squarely. 

That state governments begin to acquire security surveillance equipment outside the limits imposed on their powers by our peculiar constitution, points to one thing: the failure of the government at the centre which got so much and has been delivering so little. That is why the establishment of the South-West Security Network otherwise known as Amotekun, was resisted by the then government of General Muhammadu Buhari.

But for the willpower of the South-West governors led by the late Governor Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo State (May God continue to rest his soul), the entire Yorubaland would have long been taken over by the marauders ravaging the area today and Afenifere would have had no comfortable place to issue its one-sided statement.

Again, we should also have the courage to tell Afenifere that its assertion to wit: “In view of the fact that the primary duty of government is the security and welfare of the people, governments in South-West states of Nigeria must prove that they are alive to their constitutionally assigned responsibilities,” is a misplaced one! Granted that every level of government should pay attention to the security of the people, the sole responsibility of the quoted verses of bias by Afenifere is that of the Federal Government. The group cannot be gaslighting the South-West governors on insecurity in the region while leaving the chief culprits, the President and his Federal Government to keep playing the ostrich!

Where, in Afenifere’s thinking, is safe in Nigeria? Is the group not aware of the fact that even on the streets of Abuja, where the President resides, Nigerians are kidnapped daily? After tasking the South-West governors on the deplorable security situation in the zone, why did the group fail to ask the Federal Government to wake up to its responsibility but rather ‘commend the IGP’s swift visit” to Oriire Local government Area? After the visit, have the victims been released?

I hate to act the devil’s advocate for the South-West governors or any governor whosoever. But the truth must be told. Afenifere must be made to go back in history to discover that the rain of insecurity has been beating Yorubaland for long. It must be told that history records it for posterity that when in July 2019, the daughter of the faction of Afenifere that issued the statement in discourse, Pa Reuben Fashoranti, was murdered, and the entire evidence pointed at killer herdsmen, the then National Leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), asked us to provide the cows to show that the killers were indeed Fulani herdsmen!

When that happened, the then united Afenifere, in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, the late Yinka Odumakin, relying on the eyewitness account of the incident, said on Friday, July 12, 2019, that Mrs. Funke Olakunri, the daughter of Pa Fashoranti, was killed by herdsmen. Two days later, on Sunday, July 14, 2019, the APC National Leader, who today is the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, President Tinubu, countered him.

While on a condolence visit to the old man, Tinubu quipped: “Excuse me, I am extremely concerned about security and I don’t want a stigma. … How many years ago have we faced insecurity in this country and cases of kidnapping, is Evans who was arrested, and his disclosure, then a herdsman? I don’t want to be political, I will ask you, where are the cows?”

That statement by Tinubu exonerated the suspected killers of Olakunri and insulated the then Federal Government, which in all ramifications was flat-footed on the issue of insecurity! Afenifere cannot afford to toe that crooked line of insulation today.

The group would have made my day if its statement had been all-encompassing. The Federal Government cannot be totally out of blame in this matter. This is just as the state governors, especially in the South-West, should up their game. The South-West governors need to know that like politics, security is also local. Having scaled through the hurdles of establishing Amotekun, one would have expected that the governors would nurture the outfit like a fragile baby.

Apart from Oyo State where the security outfit has the face of seriousness, it is almost dead in the remaining states of the region. It is abysmal that a governor who would fly a $15,000 per hour private jet to Abuja to go and lobby for second term or after-tenure senatorial ticket would find it difficult to spend heavily on Amotekun, on local hunters and vigilantes who are the first point of contact on security matters in their locality.

Amotekun is too lofty an idea to be left to die! It is embarrassing that we are remembering the dead, Akeredolu, while the living are still kicking. When an old man begins to look up to his dead child for help, the living ones should begin to interrogate their existence! 

As our Rome burns from the banditry of the Fulani, Afenifere should not be seen again playing the omo-wa-ni (he-is-our-child) politics by shielding the president and blaming only the South-West governors. The President is Afenifere’s son. No father should be scared to scold his errant, failing child no matter how influential the child is!