Amotekun and dynamics of security architecture in Nigeria

One of the reading texts for Literature in English in my Arts class in secondary school was “The Bottled Leopard” authored by Chukwuemeka Ike. Incidentally, the South-West governors initiated and launched a security intervention tagged: “Amotekun” and few days later, the author of the popular novel, “The Bottled Leopard” died. What a mystery!

Some analysts describe Nigeria as a “forced marriage”, and advocate divorce as solution to the problem presently facing the country due to matrimonial disputes within the union. To however prevent this divorce, there is a need to renegotiate the terms of the marriage.

Security is one of the issues that are on the front burner in the controversial discussion over true federalism. As designed in the constitution, security is in the exclusive list and the implication is that it is only the Federal Government that can legislate on it.

Critics have however observed that all these security architectures of the government are not operating within the reality of the configuration of Nigeria. Nigerians over the years have been contending with issue of insecurity such as kidnapping, armed robbery, terrorism, cultism, ethnic and religious violence, among others.

Successive governments, both military and civilian, have adopted difference measures to curtail insecurity in Nigeria. Many of these interventions only address the insecurity challenge on the short term with the problem rearing its ugly head after sometime of hibernation.

In an attempt to address the challenges, individuals, groups, communities, state and local governments that are directly affected by the security challenges have initiated ingenious ways of addressing specific and local security challenges in their terrain.

These interventions have led to the establishment of security outfits that have provide temporary succour to the people only to snowball into another demon ravaging the communities or territory it supposed to protect.

There are even worse instances where the established security outfits set up by individuals, community leaders, and politicians have become major security threats to the entire nation.

This brings to mind the accusation that a former Borno State governor set up similar security outfit which later got out of control and developed into Boko Haram. There are also records of community leaders and politicians setting up some of these security outfits to serve their selfish and political interests only to lose control of them after delivering on their mandates. From the North to the South, the experience remains the same throughout the country.

I expect the south-west state governors to use their influence to ensure the amendment of the provisions of the 1999 Constitution to facilitate the establishment of state police rather than flagrant disregard of the law. I am not sure whether any of the six south-west state Houses of Assembly passed any bill to the effect of establishing Amotekun and offered sacrifices and spiritual blessings to the freeing of the leopard from its cage.

Until the constitution of Nigeria is amended to put the issue of security under the concurrent list, security initiatives such as the Hisba, Amotekun, Neigbourhood Watch, Vigilantee Group of Nigeria (VGN) and other related initiatives fashioned out by individuals, groups, communities, state and local governments will remain illegal.

Jamiu Folarin,

Abeokuta