- With geo-political zones forming own security outfits in response to rising insecurity, it’s time to formalize state police
After levying self-help to combat the challenge of herdsmen criminality in Ibarapa area of Oyo State, Yoruba rights activist Sunday Adeyemo, popularly known as Sunday Igboho, moved to Ogun State last week in furtherance of his crusade. He was in Abeokuta, where he was received by a large crowd to whom he reaffirmed his determination to expel killer herdsmen from Yorubaland.
“Many of our families abroad cannot come home, they are scared of being kidnapped. All expressways in the Southwest, especially Lagos and Ondo, have been taken over by killer herdsmen who are kidnapping and killing innocent people. That’s the reason why I’m here,” he said to loud cheers by the assembled city folk. Video clips also showed him in Yewa North council area of Ogun where residents of some Ketu-speaking communities were alleged to have been brutalised recently by soldiers for refusing herdsmen to graze in their domain.
Igboho was in the news recently for issuing and subsequently effecting an ultimatum to herdsmen in Igangan, Ibarapa North council area of Oyo State, to vacate the area because of rampant insecurity alleged to be by criminal herdsmen. Let’s be clear: under Nigerian law, no citizen or indeed government has the right to expel other citizens from wherever they choose to live and do business in the country. The Igboho phenomenon was an aberration that was apparently thrown up by the failure of the government to tackle the menace of killings, kidnappings and other forms of criminality that Nigerians in different communities across this country are experiencing.
Just before the Igboho ultimatum, Ondo State Governor Rotimi Akeredolu had served a seven-day notice for unregistered herdsmen illegally occupying Ondo’s forest reserves to regularise their status: register or vacate those reserves. Akeredolu’s notice was issued as part of Ondo’s efforts to tackle challenges of insecurity in the state linked with herdsmen criminality.
Resulting from that directive, governors of Southwest states, joined by Abubakar Atiku Bagudu (Kebbi State) and Mohammed Badaru Abubakar (Jigawa), held a meeting with the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association (MACBAN), in which the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) took interest and therefore participated. Ekiti State Governor Kayode Fayemi presided in his capacity as NGF Chairman.
Amidst those initiatives to tackle the security challenges in the land, there has been a confounding inertia by the government at the centre, to wit the Presidency. Of course, the Presidency raised its voice to rebut Akeredolu’s directive as unlawful and a violation of the constitutional order. But its intervention was perceived as only betraying a suspected tolerance for herdsmen criminality that might have made the menace to fester. It was upon the Ondo government’s insistence that its order was not directed at all Fulani but herdsmen irregularly occupying its forest reserves and posing security hazards that governors held the recent meeting in Akure with MACBAN where far-reaching resolutions were agreed upon. Days later, Governor Akeredolu would say those alleged criminal herdsmen were foreign Fulani.
We find it curious that the government at the centre left it to states, which do not have control of the security agencies, to troubleshoot and forage for ways out of the challenges of insecurity linked to herdsmen criminality. Although the Southwest has been the focal point in recent times, apparently due to drastic measures like the Ondo governor’s directive and Igboho’s sensational recourse to self-help, insecurity blights many communities across all zones of the country.
Yet, there has been a seeming lack of leadership and lack of will on the part of the government at the centre to confront the menace. Many people perceive the Federal Government as being reluctant to take on criminal herdsmen or discourage practices that fuel insecurity – like open grazing, which Miyetti Allah leaders themselves agreed, at the Akure meeting, need be stopped; or the factor of some herdsmen bearing arms. Moreover, there has been no strong statement to date from the Federal Government, openly condemning criminal herders or outlawing them.
Herdsmen criminality is a trend that has fuelled tension within the Nigerian polity, but which the Federal Government curiously pretends isn’t an issue. Meanwhile, nations implode with issues like these being ignored. The centre ought to be the lynchpin in giving direction for solutions to the challenges of insecurity in the country. But we see inertia at that centre; and as William Butler Yeats says in his poem ‘The Second Coming’ from which the late Chinua Achebe drew inspiration for the title of his magnum opus: “things fall apart(when) the centre cannot hold/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” The Igboho phenomenon is one manifestation of such anarchy.
Apparently because component sections of the country are being compelled to look out for themselves, they have been cobbling up regional security agencies, which in a sense is enacting informal security federalism. Early in 2020, the six Southwest states created the Western Nigeria Security Network, codenamed Amotekun. In March, same year, Southsouth governors, at a meeting in Asaba, Delta State, announced that they had agreed to a regional security outfit. Southeast governors have signalled similar intention, although that was somewhat muddled up in a unilateral initiative by the separatist and outlawed Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB), which claimed to have launched an outfit known as the Eastern Security Network (ESN) for the region.
The race for regional security arrangement might have informed fresh advocacy in recent weeks for state police. Oyo State Governor Seyi Makinde early this week said such structure would be handy to enforce the anti-grazing law. “Quite frankly, governors are at the mercy of federal security agencies to implement certain laws. That was why we asked for state police. In the first instance, it is a constitutional issue and, in the absence of having that, governors in the Southwest came together and formed Amotekun as a stop-gap,” he said at a meeting with people of Ibarapaland in the wake of Igboho’s intervention.
Even former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who historically rejected the idea of state police, has come around to pitching for it. “Why can’t we now have state police? I have been to a country like Colombia in the last five years at least a dozen times. They did exactly what we did. They moved from local and state police to national police. But now, they have gone back to state police or provincial police. Why can’t we do that? If we do that, there will be no need for Amotekun,” he said during a virtual interview hosted by a historian and columnist, Toyin Falola.
We have always argued for state police, and we here strongly make the case again as a panacea to the challenges of insecurity bedevilling the country. The widespread attraction for regional security shows that the unitary system is not meeting the needs of communities and people at the grassroots.
