In the last eight days, the South-West has recorded a rise in killings and kidnapping. Chief Sola Ebiseni, Secretary-General of pan-Yoruba sociopolitical organisation, Afenifere, speaks with IMOLEAYO OYEDEYI on the degenerating situation of things in the country and what government at all levels can do to stem the tragic tide of insecurity.
THE South-West enjoyed relative respite after the birth of Amotekun. But in the last week, the region has come under heavy attacks, culminating in the murder of three traditional rulers and the kidnap of some pupils. As we speak, the pupils and their teachers are still in the kidnappers’ den. Do you think these incidents suggest a resurgence of killings and mindless kidnapping in the region?
Well, it is no longer at ease with our security in the region. It is not as if the attacks have continued unabated, but the resurgence is unfortunate. There has not been this brazenness in terms of open arms confrontation and picking people on the road to attack them as they did to the obas in Ekiti. It is most unfortunate and it is a situation that calls for the unity of our people without recourse to partisanship. I think that the federal government’s monopoly of the instrument of coercion (security) under the exclusive legislative list needs to be checked as we need to unbundle the country’s security architecture in such a way that what we have always clamoured for, which is for state governments to have their police, should rightly come on board now. It is time for us all to look at the issue of security and policing holistically, so all hands must be on deck. On the other hand, every citizen needs to cooperate with the government at all levels, both federal and state, to stem the tide of insecurity and finally flush it out of existence. I think we are in a dire situation today.
It was in response to wide calls for state police that the Amotekun security outfit was birthed. But why do we still see these mindless killings and kidnappings despite the existence of Amotekun? Is it that the regional security outfit cannot combat the rising insecurity or its corps are not well-equipped?
Well, you have answered the question yourself. We all know what the South-West governors went through when the Amotekun security outfit was initiated. The federal government under former President Muhammadu Buhari was vehemently opposed to it and it took the whole of the South-West rising as one to dare the federal government which took the state governments in the region to court. Many lawyers in the region all rose and said, yes, we will defend our security and territorial sovereignty as a people before the federal government could back down a little by later refusing to take action against the South-West governors as it had initially threatened. Yet, the firepower allowed for Amotekun was still not commensurate with the status of weapons in the hands of the attackers. So those of us who clamour for state police are not demanding the kinds of weapons the Amotekun corps carry. However, we must give huge credit to the corps. I can tell you that if the Amotekun corps had not been around, by now, our region would have been ungovernable. So we give it to them and commend them for their gallantry irrespective of the fact that they are not allowed to bear arms with which they can effectively confront the terrorists that are assailing us now. This is because the level of insecurity now in the South-West is degenerating into terrorism. It is now beyond armed robbery and mere kidnapping. It is now brazen terrorism.
It will be recalled that last year or perhaps in 2021, these same terrorists swooped on a Catholic church in Owo, Ondo State, and close to 60 people were killed. It happened on a Sunday morning when the people were worshipping God. Now, a similar attack has recurred in the last week. We saw the ones in Ekiti State. More so, some parts in the Yewa area of Ogun State have also been under attacks. Similarly, the Akoko area of Ondo State has witnessed a lot of security crises; the same thing is playing out in Oke-Ogun area of Oyo State. What I am saying in essence is that, if you look at the whole areas I have mentioned, you will see that they are areas that bordered other regions and states. The Northern parts of Ondo State share boundaries with Kogi and Edo states. Most of these attacks happen at the fringe, and before you know it, the attackers have escaped into the forests outside of the South-West. The ones in Yewa area of Ogun State are a combination of people who came either from Kwara or from the Republic of Benin. We see the same thing in the northern parts of Ekiti, bordering Kwara State. So there is the need for the Amotekun to be deployed forcefully to the border areas of Yorubaland to stem this unfortunate incursion of terrorism into our territory.
You have said the arms Amotekun corps bear cannot match the ones the attackers parade, but could this have been the only reason for the escalating security breaches?
The highest arm you have in Amotekun is either a double-barrel gun or a pump-action machine gun. That is what Amotekun corps carry. They don’t carry AK-47 guns, which the terrorists carry at will. Amotekun is just demonstrating sheer bravery and rare determination to defend their fatherland. That is what is driving them. So when you compare their weapons with the ones in the hands of the attackers, you will see that the Amotekun corps should be highly commended. Without them, I don’t know where we would be today in the South-West. And that is why we are saying it is time for the Federal Government to allow the states to have their police with weapons that are commensurate with the level of the current threats. This is because the attackers are not ghosts or spirits. So I believe if properly equipped, I am sure Amotekun will rid Yorubaland of these terrorists.
But while the calls for state police became intense during the week, some policemen were arrested in Ogun State for allegedly aiding kidnapping. Do you think members of the Nigeria Police can be conniving with the kidnappers as alleged?
Yes, there are allegations here and there on that. But it will not do us well to start carpeting the police, because of a few bad eggs within the force, which is not peculiar to the police alone as it is in every institution of the government. What I think we should do is to isolate the bad eggs rather than utterly castigate the entire force. Besides, what do you even expect the police to do? In the first place, by the United Nations standard, a policeman is expected to attend to about 100 people. The Nigerian population is over 200 million. Yet, the entire strength of the Nigerian police is less than 400,000 and they are expected to secure about 200 million people. Mind you, among this 400,000 personnel, you have those attached to the VIPs. So it is only a few of them that are mobile and being deployed to secure the territory. So it is clear that the number and the capacity of the police are grossly inadequate. So to complement them, there is the need to have the state police on the ground. It is not as if the state police will compete with the federal police, it is just to cover the areas adequately.
I was a member of the 2014 National Conference committee and part of the resolutions reached at the conference was that every state of the federation should have its police and there should even be regional cooperation for security which was what gave rise to the Amotekun initiative. Beyond that, even in the federal police, officers beyond the level of the DSP should serve in their respective state of origin. And I am saying that as the situation is today, policemen below the level of the Assistant Commissioner of Police should be made to serve in their states. How do you think of a situation where in a multi-ethnic country like Nigeria, policemen will be deployed to go and fight in other territories who don’t even speak their language?
In most cases, what officers in this situation will do, rather than combat the attackers, is just to save their own lives. I gave an example when we were at the 2014 Confab during the period that Boko Haram was raging. Besides, if you deploy policemen to areas they are alien to, how will they understand the territory and the people? You know, security is about intelligence. If you deploy policemen to areas where they don’t even speak the local language of the people, before the policeman is even killed, he will not know. That is why it is important to make it mandatory that policemen below the rank of ACP must serve in their state or region, at least. In such a way, they will understand the culture and language of the people.
It has been discovered that in most cases those who create insecurity are the bad boys within the communities. Yes, you can have external people coming, but no external person or group of people can go and strike in a place without the connivance of the local boys in the area. So to that extent, it makes sense to ask policemen below the rank of Assistant Commissioner to serve in their respective states. That is for the federal police. And then to encourage each state to have its police too. Among men, I will give you an example. If you are in Lagos or any of the South-West states, those who employ security guards to watch over their streets prefer organisations or groups like the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC) to the police, because they know that the OPC boys know the bad boys in the various communities.
Look at when the Boko Haram thing started, and the vigilante people came up. They called them the local hunters and they grouped themselves into what they call Civilian JTFs. The Boko Haram boys were more afraid of the civilian JTFs, who were just put together without much training. The terrorists were more afraid of them than Nigerian policemen because they knew that the civilian JTF boys consisted of the local Kanuri boys, to use the example of Borno State. The civilian JTF comprised the local Kanuri boys and other ethnic nationalities in the state. The bad boys in Boko Haram knew that the JTF boys knew them, and each time they released videos to the press, you would see their leaders cursing the JTF people and not the police. So that is the advantage of having state policing. In those days, we were even having community police. To me, that for now is a sure guarantee, because if Amotekun had been fully equipped, the level of terrorism in our region would virtually have been a thing of the past.
One of the counter arguments offered against the creation of state police in Nigeria is that if created, the state police would be a tool that will be wrongly deployed by the state governors, especially given the huge powers the governors wield. What do you make of this argument?
Such an argument, to me, is mischievous. In the first place, it is rather insulting to the governor and the people who elected them to say that they, governors, will misuse the state police maybe against their political opponents. I have heard this statement several times. At the federal level, don’t we have the federal government with a party in power deploying the police against their opponent? So do we say because of that, the federal police should be scrapped? So it is a mischievous position to say that. Look at it this way, since Amotekun has been established, I think the security outfit is in its fourth or fifth year now, how much of it has been misused by the governors of the South-West? I think the argument is neither here nor there.
Given the rampaging criminalities in Nigeria, a group of 48 Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) recently called on President Bola Tinubu to declare a state of emergency in the country. How possible do you think this can be?
How do you declare a state of emergency for the entire country? Who will even execute that? Looking at some of these things, people just talk without facing the reality. Nigeria is a vast country. Even during the Nigerian civil war, a state of emergency was not declared in the entire country, not to talk of insurgency. In the first place, during former President Goodluck Jonathan’s era, was the state of emergency not declared in Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa states for many months? What was the effect of it? It is not a question of declaring a state of emergency; it is a question of creating state police and constitutionally equipping the governors to be real chief security officers (CSOs) of their states. Today, governors are called CSOs without having the power to command any security outfit. Recently, the Plateau State governor, Caleb Muftwang, who does not even command any police or have anything close to Amotekun, declared a curfew, which is the same as a state of emergency, in the Mangu Local Government Area of the state. Yet, he had to rely on the Nigerian police to enforce that declaration for him. How do you achieve efficiency in such an arrangement? Nigeria is too vast.
Similarly, when you declare a state of emergency, you are saying that the state is no longer governable, and it will even affect the democratic structures because, by that time, it is the force and not the law that rules. So I don’t think it is even advisable to declare a state of emergency in Nigeria. Do you know how large the country is? Moreover, what Nigeria is making our military do is not their assignment. The military is supposed to defend the territorial integrity of the country from external aggression, and not to be involved in chasing 419 people all over the place.
Recently, some analysts and even Afenifere called on the South-West indigenes and residents to rise and defend their land against criminal incursion, but won’t this lead to a state of anarchy?
That was part of the resolutions made by Afenifere at our Tuesday’s meeting. We said the South-Westerners, particularly the Yorubas, should rise in self-defence, adding that no action is illegitimate when it comes to self-defence. This is because there are some parts of the world where individuals are licensed to carry arms. That is what we are saying. If an armed robber comes to your house, and you have the capacity to defend yourself and your family, will you be waiting for the police? Will you say don’t worry, let me call the police? Whatever you have with you at that time is even recognized by law in self-defence. I am a lawyer. So, you can defend yourself. The only right you have, which is the ultimate right that anybody cannot take from you is your right to life. So you have every right to defend your right to life. That is what we are saying. Besides, do you even know the slogan of the Nigerian police this year? It is No gree for anybody. Haven’t you heard of that? That is, don’t allow anybody to kill you like a chicken and a fowl. So, you should use every means to defend yourself, because every action in self-defence is legitimate. You should not put your neck on a pillow for anybody to cut it off. In other words, no gree for anybody (laughs). That is what the police say. So Afenifere has only re-echoed what the police have said.
