Amotekun: There can be no aborting this pregnancy after it’s been delivered
Femi Orebe
NUISANCE begets nuisance. When you stay with potash loaders you too will share in their dusty hair. It is in this country that the same standards are not held against all. Some can get away with anything but others cannot get away with something. I shudder at those who blame the agitators for agitating. Everyone knows what is good for them. If you don’t know what is good for you then shut up and don’t obstruct those who know what is good for them.
If I have my way I will cease to be a Nigerian because there is no sense of nationhood. Those who have leverage over others use it to oppress them. Otherwise how can you explain the audacious impunity of a certain section of this country. Now how do I love a country where a murderous terrorist group like the herdsmen, acclaimed even internationally as deadly, is being openly defended by a government that wants my loyalty? Do you know that as I make this comment, a first class Chief of Bokkos LGA in Plateau state was murdered by a certain group of Fulanis almost a year now and no one has been arrested not to talk of prosecution; there are many villagers in my parish who cannot go to farm again except to farm their backyard because their farms have been forcefully annexed by their Fulani murderers; that in Bokkos a wife and a daughter can be taken away right before her husband or father and be repeatedly raped then released at the convenience of the barbaric Fulani tribesmen and no one dares talk since police will advise you to go and settle the matter through dialogue? I want independence from a country where terrorists are embraced and agitators are terrorized. At the slightest excitement a Hausa or Fulani man can kill you and get away with it; it has happened and continues to happen but when you gear up to defend yourself because security will not, then you are caught by the same security who will lecture you on how to be peaceful and law abiding. This country will end unless there is justice for all”. – Bishop Matthew Kukah, Catholic Bishop of Sokoto.
And for all these inequities visited on non northerners, what has been the advantage to the common man in the north who is dying needlessly, and in numbers, for reasons of poverty and insecurity?
Was Attorney-General Malami ever privileged to read that dirge from Bishop Matthew Kukah who is no less a northerner than him? Must non northerners always be reminded they are, in any way, less Nigerian than their northern counterparts and is the Attorney-General saying that Hisbah, in the Northwest, and the civilian JTF in the Northeast are Greek to him? Must they daily remind us of the indescribable inequalities some Nigerians are subjected to in present day Nigeria at a time when we had thought that all these would have become history with President Muhammadu Buhari in charge of our country’s affairs?
Again, as I have asked severally these past few weeks, what exactly is happening? Are we being ruled by Miyetti Allah that their interest must prevail over that of a whole geo-political zone? Haven’t they been boasting about who they will, or not, allow to be president you begin to wonder where all this arrogance is coming from.
Apart from having the Inspector-General’s declared support for Amotekun, I have Govern Kayode Fayemi’s unimpeachable words to the effect that “security agencies were duly carried along in the formative stage of the security outfit”, which he further described “as a logical end product of President Buhari’s compelling vision on community policing and as a bottom-top approach to security sector governance across the length and breadth of our country”. According to him: “Apart from strengthening the operational and administrative capacity of security institutions in our country and the training and retraining of security agents, the other vital components of this paradigm shift in national security architecture is the direct logical coherence and sequential involvement of the local population and grassroots governance in national security and crime prevention. It is in recognition of the above that the Amotekun model emerged and its proponents have already made it clear to the police authority that it is a model open to public scrutiny, a model open to reform and fine-tuning and even re-conceptualisation on the basis of any new information or superior knowledge that might assist them in improving the quality of its operations”.
That being so, and I would take Fayemi’s words a thousand times before taking Malami’s, at what point did the Attorney-General come about labelling Amotekun illegal? I have two possibilities as the answer: the first being that those unelected individuals, about whom we have heard so much from the First Lady, have again insinuated themselves into a paradigm designed as a confidence-building, and boosting, tool to free Yorubas from the marauding Fulani herdsmen who have made our lives a living hell in these parts. The second proposition could be the Northwest’s needless, but eternal, fear of restructuring, the beginning of which they wrongly take Amotekun to be. And why do I say so? Let us press former Katsina State Governor, Dr Ibrahim Shema, into the mix. Speaking at the same event as Governor Fayemi, he said the following: “On the issue of security, we all know this forms part of the process of restructuring Nigeria. I will want to propose and suggest to all concerned that there is need for coming together by states, local and federal government to work on security issues that concern and bother all Nigerians. “It is not about the South West, South East, South South and North Central, it is a national issue. Therefore, this is an issue that should bring us together the federal, states and local governments to look at it and leaders in this country, traditional institutions, religious leaders should form a team that would support the states, local and federal governments to create a system that would work and help solve the problems in Nigeria which includes the menace of Boko Haram, kidnappings, banditry, armed robbery”.
Good talk, indeed, but very misdirected.
The governors of the Southwest who came to the hardheaded decision to establish Amotekun are reacting to a very serious, life and death matter. In each of their states, some total aliens have made life absolutely unlivable for their citizens, killing, maiming and raping wives and daughters, in addition to destroying farm products worth millions of naira. Governors in the Northwest, just like Governor El Rufai did to foreign Fulanis, have chosen to throw money at bandits but because Southwest governors do not have enough even for their developmental programmes, they cannot afford the Northwest example.
It is therefore not correct to see Amotekun as having anything to do with restructuring and of a certainty; far too much time has been wasted at talk shops involving all those Dr Shema suggested, to make his suggestion a worthwhile solution to what the southwest governors are battling with. When finally the north agrees to restructure Nigeria, all those he indicated would be worthy confab members.
Back then to Amotekun…
Is it conceivable Attorney-General Malami pronounced his diktat without consulting President Buhari, and if he did consult him, is it possible President Buhari believes that it is enough to merely routinely send condolences to bereaved families rather than have elected leaders wake up and, design models that can help in resolving these life and death matters instead of throwing money at anti-social elements who are sure to return to ask for more money or else keep killing just as 28 were killed in Babban Rafi village in Zamfara this past week?
As members of the opposition have severally alleged, could these be the reasons the north completely dominates the headship of Nigeria’s security services?
Pray what is the end in view for all these? Could it be an ethnic domination of Nigeria where we are now routinely being told that foreign Fulanis have as much, if not superior, rights than non Fulanis?
How exactly would Amotekun negatively impact the north or was it declared illegal because it will protect our people against murderous Fulani herdsmen, local and foreign, who just wants to roam and roam, uninhibited? Or is the Attorney-General telling Yorubas to lie low to be killed, our hearts slit, while our wives and daughters are being raped or killed, just so cows can roam unmolested?
Mr President we love you more than for us to feign ignorance of the angst in town; in the entire south and in the north where needless death, in numbers, have become a daily occurrence. You should be seen, Mr President, encouraging Amotekun look-a-likes, everywhere, rather than allow some unreflecting state officials to kill them off. Insecurity in Nigeria has become so menacing that the federal government should actually subside Amotekun’s in each of the geo-political zones, not discourage them. We probably won’t have more deaths today in Nigeria, even if we were fighting a full war. We cannot be doing the same thing and expect to have a different result.
The Attorney-General should immediately be directed to reverse himself on Amotekun. Nigeria belongs to all of us.