Arming Amotekun

DURING his media interviews prior to the celebration of this year’s Democracy Day on June 12, President Muhammadu Buhari, in what must count, going by his standards, as a moment of rare lucidity, opened up on his meetings with some governors of the South-West states who had met with him over the security situation in their respective domains. The president said he told them to stop complaining, go back home, and protect their citizens, apparently with the security votes in their vaults. But he was merely being facetious, because if the said governors had the means to protect their people, they would not have sought his help as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. For instance, during the recent massacre visited on the people of Igangan Oyo State, the marauding bandits had used various sophisticated weapons, including AK 47 rifles, something which was not in possession of the operatives of the Western Nigeria Security Network (Amotekun) who tried to repel them. Indeed, only last week, the Oyo State governor, Mr. Seyi Makinde, had to appeal to the Federal Government to allow him buy AK-47 rifles for Amotekun operatives so that they could effectively discharge their constitutional mandate.

This brings to the fore, the question of the kind of federalism being practised in the country. The 36 states of the country and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) administration do not have the wherewithal to protect their citizens. They cannot respond meaningfully to citizens in travail. No governor has members of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) under his control. Governors, as it were, have to be in the good books of the Commissioner of Police in their domain who, for all practical purposes, takes his orders from the police headquarters in Abuja where the Inspector General of Police calls the shots. It is now quite clear that only a balance of terror can adequately address the onslaught of the marauding bandits and terrorists who invade the spaces lawfully inhabited  by the defenceless citizens of these states. The opposition of the Buhari government towards state policing is beginning to look like a conspiracy against the Nigerian people who are being regularly butchered by bandits and terrorists while requesting in vain for their governors to protect them.

Against the following backdrop, the call for the Amotekun security outfit to be fully armed is worthy of support. In a very significant sense, it is really a return to the demand for state policing in the country. With the spate of invasions in different parts of the region by Fulani marauders who are invariably heavily armed and have consistently inflicted heavy casualties on the people, how does anyone expect the Amotekun outfit to provide security for the people and face the invading Fulani marauders without bearing any arms while the invaders are heavily armed? What magic can they perform with the limited and opaque arms in their possession?

The first business of the government is security of life and property. Since it has been shown that the centralised NPF is not in a position to provide and guarantee adequate security to the people, it would be important to move for the establishment of state police to bridge the security gap. There is no way the Amotekun outfit would approximate the desire for state police without the personnel of the outfit being empowered with arms in order to be in a position to provide security for the people. That being the case, the National Assembly should immediately amend the constitution to provide for the establishment of state police. It should also pass necessary laws to give arms to security outfits such as Amotekun. This would show that it is concerned about providing relief to the people.

Happily, this is something that the leadership of the House of Representatives as well as members of the Senate are quite open to. Delivering his welcome address at the beginning of plenary in January last year, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rt. Hon Femi Gbajabiamila, had stated that the House under his leadership would amend the constitution to back various security interventions in parts of the country. While noting that the formation of Amotekun and other security interventions were due to the rising security across the country, Gbajabiamila had said: “Too often, it has seemed to me that lost in these interactions is the hard, brutal and unavoidable fact that Àmòtékùn and other such state or zonal interventions that already quietly exist in other parts of the country are a desperate response to the vile manifestations of insecurity that trouble the lives of citizens, depriving them of the peace and security that gives life meaning. I do not know that Àmòtékùn or whatever iterations of it that follow represents the ultimate or perfect solution to the problem of insecurity in our country. Nobody does that. What I do know with absolute clarity and certainty is that the localised manifestations of insecurity across the different parts of our country call for unique and localised approaches that take those peculiarities into account.”

That, precisely, is the way to go. The National Assembly should act without delay.

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