Amotekun, community police and all that

Olakunle Abimbola

 Amotekun and community police, twin-drivers of the latest security controversy, must be placed in requisite conceptual blocs: the clash between federalist and centralist pulls, in a country craving a workable balance.

Still, an early caveat: Amotekun wouldn’t have had any appeal, nor community police any need, had the central police and allied security system not faltered; so much so that many citizens now begin to question the very basis of the Nigerian state.

But today’s reaction to community policing (latest tool of the centralist forces) and Amotekun (latest counter-tool of the South West federalist wing — and the most vibrant arm of the nationwide federalist army), appears rooted in the utterances of Nigeria’s tripod of founding fathers, with their accompanying conspiracy theories.

You must, however, note: these utterances were driven more by the mutual fear of the unknown in emergent Nigeria.  So were the distemper that came with these fears, and have plagued the polity till this day.

Sir Ahmadu Bello, the famed Sar’dauna of Sokoto and first northern premier, spoke of dipping the Koran in the sea; and carving out all of southern Nigeria among his political lieutenants, while he bossed affairs from Kaduna.  That hegemonic boast naturally provoked a fierce southern anti-Islamization whiplash.

Still, the Sar’dauna bluster would appear driven more by the North’s impotence at feared southern domination (in a Nigeria to be driven by products of Western education, where the North could barely compete), than any cocksure hegemonic reality, even if the North indeed harboured such a dominant power dream.

Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, the great Zik of Africa in 1949, told the Ibo Federal Union gathered in Aba, that the “God of Africa … created the [martial] Ibo nation to lead the children of Africa from the bondage of the ages …”

Ironically, Zik’s hint at eventual Igbo domination, even if benign, was rooted in Igbo fears and complaints, in 1949 colonial Nigeria: “Since suffering is the label of our tribe,” he rued, “we can afford to be sacrificed for the ultimate redemption of the children of Africa.”

Chief Obafemi Awolowo, clearly the sharpest developmental mind of his era, seemed to have taken the Sar’dauna hegemonic threat most frontally, leading the Yoruba and their culturally liberal worldview, which bristled at any domination, benign or malign.

Better to die and perish, he was quoted to have sworn, than be subjugated by anyone!  But the same Awo, more than anyone of his era, articulated a federalist principle (to fend off any ethnic domination in emergent Nigeria) and mass education (to make his people better compete, in the polity to come).

This brief trip into Nigerian contemporary history demonstrates that in this conceptual push-and-pull, each side generates emotive distempers, which portray the polity as an irredeemable dystopia — which it is not.

But these distempers are so fearsome, they become symptoms that loom larger, and seem far more virulent, than the actual disease.  They also make complex otherwise simple issues.

Welcome, yet again, to another distracting bedlam, where folks yell at each other, after which no one is none the wiser!

Yet, for a fruitful discourse, folks should reason with one another.  That compels a clinical analysis, in which venom and emotions have little place.

Now, back to the core issue: on central policing, the Nigerian centrist pull has failed — and there is no other way to put it.

Despite Nigerian regions’ abuse of local police, pre-1st Republic and during that short-lived era, unitary Police, in a federal Nigeria, is catastrophe waiting to happen.  The current security meltdowns are ample proof of that epochal miscalculation.

The Federal Government’s latest “community police” is, frankly, an attempt to dig deeper to the hole, when there ought to be a quick, smart strategy to bale out of that security ditch.

Indeed, “community police”, unleashed from Abuja, is a violent contradiction in terms.  Perhaps it could offer some comfort, if it were conceived to link the central Police command with the outlying communities, the savage butt of the serious insecurity crisis.

That way, there would be some built-in flexibility, in the operational command structure, featuring Abuja and local players.

But the Garba Shehu community police portraiture, in which the IGP is summary czar, is much of the present same, which has not worked.  It risks being another bureaucratic layer, which further pushes urgent solution away from a crying crisis.

Still, the Amotekun lobby themselves appear more primed to gripe and growl (perhaps for good reasons), at the crafty central subversion of the Amotekun agenda.

Indeed, the South West compromise to re-make Amotekun a state-by-state affair, from the unified regional outfit it was originally conceived, fuels the promoters’ anger.

Still, this cold point must be made, which again reinforces the supremacy of clinical thinking over base anger: Amotekun is not especially useful to the South West because it is harmful to others.

On the contrary, Amotekun is useful, nay critical, to all — East, West, North and South. Indeed with a North West Amotekun variant, Aminu Bello Masari, Katsina governor, won’t complain his outlying areas are sitting ducks for bandits, because they are thinly policed.

With the failure of the central security apparatus, therefore, the Amotekun concept, of decentralized policing, spiced with a vibrant local content, to aid intelligence-gathering and forestall crime, is the sane way to go.

So, different shades of Amotekun, all over the geo-political zones, should earn a joyful — and grateful — federal nod.  It should help the Federal Government regain the security mojo. It’s a win-win for everybody, that could presage a new security dawn.

In the toxic centralist-federalist exchange, many have claimed a central police is a hegemonic agenda.  But what is hegemony worth, if you can’t secure the space, which you dream to dominate?  If this central system is failing, how can that hegemony survive?

Decentralizing security, with requisite local input, is the way to go.  That is how the locals can take ownership of own security, by not taking laws into their hands.

Still, Nigerians must learn to discuss this crucial issue without throwing tantrums and belching fire.

A suitable security architecture should not continue to plague Nigeria, as race relations is plaguing Donald Trump’s America, 244 years afters it’s 1776 Declaration of Independence.

But only a frank exchange of ideas anchored on logic and common sense, not a thunderous trading of insults driven by base fears, can avert that plague.