No to unregulated, unguarded Iru Ekun

In Yorubaland Encircled (June 11, 2022), I wrote: “Death lurks in Yoruba forests. Farming is risky: rape without a slit throat is a lucky escape. The forests are no longer the spring from which pen wielders like Tutuola and Fagunwa documented demonology. They are no longer the site of fickle ancestors. They have been taken over by fair men from distant lands, men who maraud for a living and have no subscription to Nigeria’s green-white-green.”  That situation remains today, and it has spawned disparate groups, one of which is the Iru Ekun network floated by the Yoruba Nation activist, Sunday Adeyemo, the man his admirers call Igboho Oosa (Igboho the god) in deep veneration.

Fresh from his visit to the palace of the Ooni of Ife, where he received royal blessings and a N100 million pledge, Igboho has been visiting traditional rulers across the South-West, canvassing for his Iru Ekun (Leopard’s Tail) in a region that already has Amotekun. That is not unusual: our people say it is by the way a bird flies that you aim a stone at it. But the optics are not necessarily right, as I argue below.

Prior to the Bola Tinubu presidency, Igboho was a fugitive. He was hunted down by the ethnically insensitive, provocatively partisan, and intensely unpatriotic Muhammadu Buhari government. Buhari, who had told Benue leaders to “accommodate” their “countrymen” following the pogrom staged by Fulani terrorists in the state on New Year’s Day 2018, treated Igboho like public enemy number one simply because of his outspokenness against Fulani marauders whose genocidal onslaughts his government had conveniently overlooked. Having once said that an attack on Boko Haram was an attack on the North, Buhari was a crudely provincial ethnic bigot whose presidency witnessed the decimation of vast numbers of communities by his kith and kin. It was therefore only natural for him to be baying for Igboho’s blood. Security agencies shed blood on Igboho’s homestead, and Buhari later sought, albeit unsuccessfully, to extradite the activist from his place of refuge in the Republic of Benin.

With Tinubu in power, however, Igboho, who had committed no violence whatsoever but had only vigorously protested herder genocide in Yoruba communities, including in Igangan, Oyo State, where the outlaws committed heartrending barbarity, got a lifeline. But lacking the sensibility of a trained security operative, Igboho has adopted a loudmouthed, raucous approach to security issues: witness, for instance, his theatrical performance during the Oriire kidnapping episode, where he supposedly deployed drones and called on the authorities to hand the rescue operation over to him. Predictably, the dogs of empire, including the lawless rogues who recently sought to kidnap the Ifa propagator Talolohun for a second time in Ibadan, have latched onto Igboho’s crudity to canvass the continued subjugation of Yoruba communities in Kwara State.

Buoyed by his reversal of fortune, Igboho declared on Thursday that Iru Ekun would support President Bola Tinubu in the fight against bandits, kidnappers, and other criminals in the South-West. Said His Media Office: “It is clear to everyone that the bad actions of dishonest herdsmen, thieves, and kidnappers, who have been troubling our farming areas and other communities, have stopped since the Iru Ekun Security Network started working with support from the police, military, and DSS. We are not going to stop or give in until the South-West forests, highways, and farming areas are safe for everyone. We can’t let criminals turn the area into a safe haven for them.”

If cases of kidnapping and herder onslaughts on farmers have decreased in the South-West, that is not due to Igboho’s Iru Ekun but to the combined efforts of state governments in the zone. Igboho never stops attributing security successes to himself, but that is not the point of this piece. What does Igboho mean by saying that President Tinubu ratified the formation of Iru Ekun? The President, whom I do not blame for redressing the injustice done to Igboho, cannot ratify any ethnic militia. If the President wants any new security agency created, he will do so through the National Assembly, as Obasanjo did in the case of the NSCDC. I suspect that, in his characteristically boastful manner, Igboho is just throwing the President’s name around. Nigeria’s North already has arms-wielding groups performing state functions, so this is not necessarily a legalistic argument.

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My question is this: what legal instrument created Iru Ekun? No one knows its articles of formation, personnel, modus operandi, or area of coverage. Igboho, no matter who he thinks himself to be, cannot override the governments of the South-West and float an outfit tied to his whims. If Amotekun is operating in South-West states, it is because the governments of the zone created it. Go through the Ekiti State Security Network Agency and Amotekun Corps Law No. 1 of 2020, the Ondo State Security Network Agency and Amotekun Corps Law, 2020, and allied legislation, and you will find that Amotekun has a solid basis in law.

If left unregulated, Iru Ekun can become the monster it was intended to tame. Ethnic militias have historically been associated with mass killings, retaliation, intimidation of civilians, and the recruitment of young people into armed conflict. The Interahamwe in Rwanda, the Janjaweed in Sudan and the sectarian militias in Lebanon offer useful lessons on how groups can spiral out of control.

If Yorubaland is to be secure, it has to be through collective effort, not through exclusivist groups setting up a binary dichotomy. Igboho poses as the saviour of the Yoruba race, but that is ahistorical. No single individual can secure a race. At the slightest opportunity, his minions attack the Aare Ona Kakanfo, Chief Gani Adams, calling him a woman and claiming the land is secured by their boss. But I was around during the military era when strangers tried to overrun Lagos and even claimed that Alausa (Alawusa: the place of the walnut) belonged to the Hausa! The Sani Abacha government did everything in its power to enslave the Yoruba. It was Gani Adams who rose to challenge that onslaught. No less a personality than Lt-Gen Oladipo Diya later expressed admiration for the bravery of OPC-led Yoruba youths during those terrible days. At the time, someone advised me, as a Man O’War member in Ikorodu, to adopt a northern name to brighten my chances of joining the Nigerian Army. I categorically refused. You can badmouth Gani Adams today simply because he is asking for state authorization before going after criminals in the forests, but history will vindicate his position. The same critics of Gani Adams are the people placing VDM over Omoyele Sowore, a man who confronted military dictators.

In The Steps Yorubaland must take to survive (June 6, 2026), I submitted that securing the South-West will require collective effort. I called for the equipping of Amotekun with requisite weapons; the setting up of State Tactical Guards; the constitution of an Elders Security Council; the creation of a Diaspora Protection Fund, and the actualization of a cattle revolution.

I am open to further suggestions, but I cannot back lone-ranger groups riding roughshod over constituted authority.

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