Why is the federal government of Nigeria jittery over the commendable initiative of governors of the south-west region to float a security network christened Amotekun to secure the life and property of individuals and businesses within the region? Does it not sound strange that a government that has done very little to keep Nigerians safe is protesting the decision of a group of governors to rise to the most important responsibility of governance: securing the lives of the citizens? Assuming that the governors in Yoruba land listen to Abuja and abandon the homegrown initiative to keep natives and settlers in the region safe, what superior measures is Abuja proposing?
President Muhammad Buhari -by most accounts- is the most incompetent and clueless leader to have ever ruled Nigeria. Incompetence is not the president’s only shortcoming. He is arrogant, distant and impervious to reason. You can also add lethargy, very limited exposure and cognitive weaknesses as some of the many handicaps impeding Buhari’s ability to do the job he spent 12 years asking for.
Sadly, it is in an area where many had expected Buhari to be above board that he has floored the most. Many who voted for Buhari in 2015 did so on the understanding that Buhari’s military background would provide him the leverage to tackle the many security challenges facing the nation- especially terrorism by members of the Boko Haram sect. Pathetically, Buhari’s worst performance has been in the area of security. Forget his poor economic policy articulation, his woeful performance on infrastructure or his hypocritical stance on corruption, Buhari through his actions and inactions has made Nigeria a very insecure territory.
The Boko Haram terrorists appear to have been emboldened since 2015. While in the years before the coming of Buhari, the terrorists set their attention on unprotected places like public motor parks, places of worship and schools, they have since turned their sights on new targets, hitting military formations, taking hold of military-grade weapons and logistics vehicles and even carting away food items meant for feeding the troops. From Yobe to Borno, Zamfara to Adamawa, the terrorists have been unrelenting in decimating our troops, killing soldiers and stealing whatever they can lay their hands on- right inside military bases. How many people who followed Buhari’s campaign in 2015 could have imagined this?
Curiously, Buhari is still keeping the chief of army staff whose men are being slaughtered like animals at Christmas. Buhari is the only chief executive in the entire world who demands no form of accountability from his subordinates; the man just makes his appointments and allows his appointees to do whatever it is they like. Buhari, it does appear, has very little understanding of the word “accountability” itself for if he did, all the heads of the security organisations appointed by him weeks after taking office in 2015 ought to have long been dismissed for their failure to rein in on the Boko Haram terrorist group despite the humongous billions allocated for security every year. Nigeria’s security budget has continued to skyrocket in the last five years and yet, the nation’s problems on the security front continue to widen. If anybody is being made to account for the utilization of the hundreds of billions of naira channelled into the security sector every year, it must have been a well-kept secret. The general perception though is that funds that are mapped out to address the nation’s security problems are misappropriated, embezzled and outrightly stolen by the military chiefs and their collaborators within the highest echelon of power in Nigeria.
Compare Buhari’s disposition and tolerance of incompetence on the part of his military chiefs with what played out in Niger Republic earlier in the year following a deadly terror attack that killed an estimated 160 soldiers in the Chinagrodrar Advanced Military post. In less than 48 hours after the attack, the country’s president Mahamadou Issoufou fired the army chief Ahmed Mohamed and had him replaced by Salifou Modi. That is what a leader should do not make excuses or tell idle tales.
Buhari has continued to manufacture excuses for Tukur Buratai that you would think he is the army chief’s public relations manager. After the killing of hundreds of Nigerian soldiers and thousands of civilians in the last four years by members of the satanic Boko Haram sect, Buratai sits secure as Nigeria’s chief of army staff and a president who promised to fight Boko Haram with everything at his disposal sees nothing wrong with the sordid state of affairs. Is it any wonder many of these soldiers are taking to criminality, bribery, car theft and outright robbery of whatever catches their fancy? Yes, information in the public domain suggests that the morale of the fighters is at the lowest it can ever be with multiple complains of delay in payment of entitlements and benefits for slain soldiers. It is even worse that when these soldiers are killed by the terrorists, their death is covered up by the military operatives who bury them in shallow graves in the dead of the night while the top officers continue to party.
Now make no mistake. The Boko Haram terrorist group are not the only group creating security nightmares for Nigerians in rural and urban centres in the north and south of the country. As a matter of fact, outside of the north east region of the country, very little is known of the Boko Haram terrorists apart from what is read through the news media. Interestingly, it does appear that the terror group ceded other parts of the country to another franchise terror group identified globally as “Fulani herdsmen.” According to a 2015 news publication by the Independent of the UK, the Fulani militia group sits at number four in the rank of the world’s deadliest terror groups behind Islamic State (ISIS), the Taliban, Al-Shabaab and Boko Haram. While the Fulani herdsmen restricted themselves to sporadic nocturnal attacks in rural communities across the north central state before 2015, they have since expanded their ugly tentacles to other parts of the country killing people in their thousands in Enugu, Delta, Ekiti, Kogi and wherever it is they can find people to kill.
The Fulani terrorist herders do not just restrict themselves to killing of defenceless individuals in the dead of the night or in the isolation of rural farm settlements. No, they are equally notorious for raping women- including minors, armed robbery, kidnapping and arson. They caused so much havoc in Enugu last year killing about three Catholic priests that the usually conservative Catholic community took to the streets in protest. In the south west region, they killed the daughter of the very influential Yoruba leader- Pa Reuben Fasoranti. The killing of Olufunke Olakunrin happened three years after a former secretary to the government of the federation- Olu Falae- was attacked in his farm and his security operative killed. These were not just ordinary attacks. They were instigated to send a direct message to the Yorubas that the Fulani bandits have a foothold in their territory. Olakunrin and Pa Falae were not the only victims of Fulani militia’s aggression in the south west region. The media have been publishing countless reports of the killing of farmers, kidnapping and rape of commuters, robbery attacks and other forms of unspeakable evils all masterminded in Yourba land by men believed to be Fulani herdsmen.
After years of watching their people attacked, their property destroyed by the fourth largest terrorist group in the world with very little response from the federal security agencies, the Yoruba governors elected to take the initiative and explore home-grown solutions to tackling the herdsmen menace and other forms of insecurity in their region.
The inauguration of the security operation nicknamed Amotekun by the governors earlier in January was a self-help effort to protect the life and property of the electorates in south west Nigeria. Curiously, a federal government that merely sat back as Fulani herdsmen and other franchise criminal groups attacked and killed the Yorubas in their numbers suddenly woke up and realised that the commendable efforts of the six governors to protect their territory from a vicious terrorist group was an act of illegality and in the manner a school headmaster would issue instructions to his pupils, directed the elected public officials to disband the group.
It is commendable that the governors are not standing down. Governor Rotimi Akerodolu has already announced that he is willing to make political sacrifices to see that the Amotekun initiative is sustained. Governor Seyi Makinde and his counterpart in Ekiti- Kayode Fayemi are also talking tough. They have told Abuja that they cannot be dictated to. Many Nigerians are glad that the leaders of the south west are finally standing their ground- perhaps lately- having understood that Buhari is a provincial leader who sees himself as a tribal emperor hired to deploy the resources of the nation to advance the interest of his ethnic group to the detriment of others.
How can the Buhari administration that has said nothing about the activities of the Sharia police in Kano and other parts of northern Nigeria suddenly realise that Amotekun is illegal? How many times has the attorney general spoken out against the activities of the Civilian JTF in the north east who bravely fight with the soldiers against the Boko Haram terrorist sect? Is it not strange that a government that loses thousands of citizens to criminal groups (kidnappers, armed robbers, terrorists, sundry, freelance criminals) every quarter is protesting the efforts made by a group of elected officials to reduce the carnage- even if it is for their region alone? Why is a regional security arrangement good for the north west and north east but bad for south west?
Even more disturbing is the careless, uncouth and uncivilised, provocative intervention of the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association. How can the spokesman of this group go on national television and call the Yorubas names and a government fighting hate speech has not deemed it fit to send him an invitation to come over and explain what he meant when he called the Yorubas “primitive?” Many of us were not aware that it has become the exclusive rights of the Fulani cattle herders to decree who becomes the president of Nigeria until this selfsame Alhassan Saleh came out to instruct the Yorubas to either abandon the Amotekun initiative or perish the thoughts of taking over from Buhari.
Who empowered this lunatic to talk to the Yorubas with such disrespect? Well, the man will get more than he could have bargained for when the Yoruba literati come for him. An official of a group of cattle herders cannot by any stretch of imagination outdo the multitude of intellectuals you find in Yoruba land. He won’t find the whirlwind that is sure to follow his careless remarks funny.
Beyond the verbal war, the Yorubas have shown the Igbo governors, those from the south south and the leaders of the north central who are also reeling under the heavy weight of insecurity challenges especially the attacks and carnages masterminded by Fulani cattle herders who killed scores of people in one night in January 2018 the way to go. There can be no sitting on the fence in this instance. Refusing to act immediately makes these governors accomplices to the activities and regional and national criminal groups. The Yorubas have shown all the other regions the meaning of self defence, the rest must follow at once. A security system under the firm control of the president’s kinsmen would be less motivated to act in crimes where their tribesmen are the chief suspects. The asinine belief that the Fulanis value their cows more than human lives must be challenged with every force of resistance available to the people. One cattle may be worth one million human lives in Daura; however, no other community must be compelled to accept such idiotic valuation.
