Follow Us on Google
•Anyone that sends armed civilians to invade forests without govt approval can be treated as a criminal
Aare Onakakanfo of Yorubaland, Iba Gani Adams, in this interview with CHRISTY ANYANWU, speaks about the spiralling insecurity around the country, with emphasis on attacks on innocent people in the South West as well as in parts of Kwara and Kogi. He calls for immediate action to end the killings, kidnappings and other acts of terror, government collaboration and unity of purpose among the Yoruba and an overhaul of the security system, among other issues.
What is your impression about the security challenges in the South-West?
Well, the situation is very sad. Very sad indeed. The current situation, especially what happened in Oriire Local Government of Oyo State at Ogbomosho, was highly disturbing and something we are not used to in the South-West.
In the history of this region, we haven’t experienced mass kidnapping, especially children from the age of two to 16. It shows that we still have a long way to go to be proactive on the issue of security of the South-West. It shows that every hand must be on deck to make sure the region is safe from these criminal terrorists.
From the look of things, the wave of the (terror) activities is coming from the North-East to North-West, from the North-West to North-Central. And don’t forget that, for South-West, there’s a buffer zone. Kwara State and Kogi states are buffer zones to the South-West.
And in one way or the other, they have been successful in attacking many communities in Kogi and Kwara. Now, the next place to attack is the South-West, and we have been seeing the smoke coming for the past six years. The smoke was just coming.
What we see now, from Ondo, Ekiti, Oyo states, shows that we have to prepare so that they won’t turn the South-West to an unsafe area like some regions where they have done something similar.
What do you think is the cause of the influx of these bandits in Yorubaland?
Threats. Serious threats. They want to create an unsafe environment. Create an unsafe South-West. Creating fear in our people and investors in the South-West. And the implication is too large to quantify, because, when you allow an influx of criminals to your region, definitely, you are not safe.
Criminals can strike anytime, as long as they have infiltrated your region. If you don’t have serious intelligence about what is happening in your region, by the time they strike, the collateral damage will be too much to handle. So, the implication of that influx is too high. It’s too risky to bear for a region that has about 60 to 70 per cent of the investments in Nigeria.
There are criticisms that, as the Aare Onakakanfo, you are supposed to be at the forefront of the fight against bandits but you don’t seem to be doing much. What’s going on?
An Aare Onakakanfo that doesn’t have any function in the Nigerian government? Aare Onakakanfo that is not even given a salary? Aare Onakakanfo that was not even given a contract? Even apart from that, Aare Onakakanfo that has been shouting, writing letters to the government that there is a need for collaboration for the past five years? And the government did not listen.
You can’t enter someone’s street if the gates have been locked on you to say you want to save the people of that street. And you can’t enter someone’s building that has gates and the gates of that house have been locked against you and you say you want to save the people of that house. So, definitely, the governors are the chief security officers of their states. Likewise the local government chairmen. If the government does not allow you to participate or to collaborate with them on the issue of security of the state, it would be very difficult, especially as Aare Onakakanfo, to be involved in their security activities.
I’ve tried my best to convince them that we have a structure that can assist them, that we can collaborate with them.
I’ve travelled to many countries. Security is not about the government alone. But they have the impression that they are in power, anything about security lies on them.
Although it is reflected in the Constitution that the major responsibility of the government is to protect lives and property of citizens but, at the same time, you must have external allies. You must have some groups, private groups, that can be of assistance.
In South Africa, more than 2,000 private security men are employed in coordination with the government’s security. That was one of the things arising from the issue of violence, apart from xenophobia that normally happens against foreigners in South Africa. Private security organisations are designated to protect many multinational organisations in South Africa.
And in many countries, different groups are engaged to work with them on the basis of intelligence-gathering – to gather intelligence with them. Sometimes they engage them for very serious operations. One of the agencies in South Africa was given a contract by the President Goodluck Jonathan-led government to push back Boko Haram before the election in 2015 and within two months they achieved a lot to the extent that they pushed Boko Haram back 60 per cent from where they were occupying many local governments. When Jonathan left, Buhari terminated the contract and chased them back to their country. And when you are talking of the Oodua People’s Congress (OPC), we are not talking about Oodua People’s Congress alone. We are talking of South-West Security Stakeholders Group that comprises about 14 different organisations. And apart from this Southwest Security Stakeholders Group, 33 different security groups met under my leadership on November 8 last year. And we discussed, we agreed that we were ready to work with the government to make sure we reduce these security threats in Yorubaland.
But the security conference, Yoruba security conference, was held at 10 Degree hall in Ikeja. We had nothing less than 4,000 representatives of those 33 different organisations. But since then, no government official has told me that they need help or even asked me, ‘Can you assist us in any way on this issue of security threats?’ I wrote a letter to them, precisely on the 7th of February, 2024, almost two and a half years ago, the governors refused to even call me, ‘What can you do for us? What can you do for us as a South-West government?’ So, me being Aare Onakakanfo, I cannot force myself on the government in power.
And you can’t intrude on the security architecture of the government without them calling you to collaborate with them. It will be very difficult. It will be counterproductive.
The government will turn you to a criminal because you have not been called to assist them to do that job. You were not called to collaborate with them.
We are not saying that their security architecture should not work. We said we want collaboration on any level, we can help. And we have structures. There is no community in Yorubaland where we do not have structures. The remaining 13 organisations in Southwest Security Stakeholders have structures in some of the communities. The remaining 19 organisations collaborate with us in the Yoruba Security Conference; we have our elderly socio-cultural groups out of that 33, such as Afenifere, they can just give advice.
Afenifere, Yoruba Council of Elders, Yoruba Unity Forum, they can give advice. Apart from those three elderly organisations, the remaining 30 organisations are security-relevant groups that can be helpful in the security issues of Nigeria. What we thought was that, after the Yoruba Security Conference, the government would call us so that we could have leadership. The leadership would map out strategies, how we can engage with the government structures and build a very good security network in the South-West. But nobody called us. And I have been saying this. We have called three or four world press conferences regarding collaboration. But they did not respond. There is nothing I can do without the collaboration of the government in power.
What do you think of activist and Yoruba nationalist Sunday Igboho who says he is going to deploy members of his group to the forests?
I don’t think he said that. What he is saying is he is calling for collaboration now. Maybe that was what he was saying before. But now it is the same thing I have been saying from the beginning. He has now joined the queue.
And he needs clearance from the government. But my own approach is quite different. My own is a collaboration with the South-West government.
He was calling for recognition from the federal government, and this is a state matter. The federal government can just give a clearance to the governors and the governors are the ones that will approach the federal government. It is not my duty to approach the federal government on a state’s security issues. So, if we talk to the governors, the governors can talk to the President. The President will give the nudge that we can go ahead. It won’t affect the federal structure.
My own approach is collaboration with the South-West governors. But all that notwithstanding, in one way or the other, he too has joined the queue that he needs clearance from the government before entering the field of security. There is nobody that can just jump into the security architecture of the government without the approval of the government.
That would be the beginning of anarchy. You can’t have two governments at the same time in one country.
It’s anarchy because, when you move on the issue of security without the approval of the government on ground, you want to create another government since you have already tried to hijack the duties of the government in power.
You will be arrested and charged for that. Apart from that, the weapons that you will need to use, they will charge you for illegal possession of weapons. At last, they will charge you for treason, that you want to overthrow the government.
So, you have to be very careful. You have to respect the constituted authorities. And there is no other way you will fight the cause, even though you want to help your people.
We are not in a state of full-scale war. If this is a full-scale war, everybody can look for a way to defend their people. We don’t pray for a full-scale war. A full-scale war is when you have to defend your territory, where there is no government in power. But now we still have constituted authority that works, and you must work with them for better coordination, so that if you do not know what they are planning, you won’t do something that will obstruct their strategy.
From what you’ve said, it’s like the South-West governors are scared of collaborating with you. What can be responsible for that?
Well, we haven’t heard from them. That’s what I’m saying, we haven’t heard from them. I said, why are they not collaborating with us? I don’t know.
But I don’t believe they are scared. Because I don’t see anything that would scare them as governors of the South-West.
Other News
I think it may be about political clearance. Maybe they haven’t got clearance from the Presidency.
And I don’t have the impression that they don’t feel what is happening. And I don’t believe that they have a nonchalant attitude towards the people of their state. I don’t believe in that. What I suspect is that they haven’t got clearance from the Presidency.
Some people have asked, why don’t you deploy your OPC members to the forests, even without getting approval?
Maybe because those people are illiterate. Those people don’t know how the government works. Even in a street or a community, let me say community, that is being controlled by a king, you can’t just move to that community without the knowledge and approval of the community and the council of chiefs.
I’m talking about the basic community, not the whole state. So, someone has said that I’d just deploy OPC to a state without the knowledge of the governor. Those are the people who want to set us up against the government.
And when the problem comes, they will keep quiet. You know, we have some people in Yorubaland that normally push you to destroy you.
They will push you. When they destroy you, they will keep quiet. They don’t care. So it happened to Aare MKO Abiola.
MKO Abiola was planning to fight his cause from exile in the United States but some Yorubas pressured him that he should go back to Nigeria and get his mandate, ‘you must not stay here’. Those were the diaspora people. Abiola planned to even form a government in exile to put the Abacha government on its toes through international influence and networks. But some Yorubas in the diaspora pressured him.
I heard that in that meeting they even embarrassed him. They even talked as if they were the owners of the US: ‘You can’t stay in the US and leave your mandate in Nigeria. You have to go back’, they told him.
They said he had to go back and get his mandate from Abacha. As liberal as Abiola was, he acted as a democrat, because the majority in that meeting he had with the Yoruba people in the diaspora, the majority of them were on the same page. So Abiola called the NADECO members in Nigeria and said this is what the diaspora people said, that he should come back home and declare that he was the President of the country, he should not stay in the US. Some of the NADECO people agreed with the idea and others objected to it.
And when Abiola came back, he went to Epetedo and declared himself President. That was the beginning of the trouble, especially with a military government like Abacha. A civilian government would have taken it lightly, might have warned him and taken him to court, but immediately Abacha arrested him Abiola was taken to Abuja alive. They brought his corpse back four years later to Lagos .So we know our people here. They will push you on the wrong side.
They know that this thing cannot work. And those people that were saying these things, none of them, their members or their family joined civil society. And they will never join any freedom fighter or organisation. Even when they see their family joining a freedom fighting organisation, they will discourage them. ‘What are you doing there?’ Those are the people that always propose the wrong strategy for you to be destroyed.
What do you think the security agencies should do to end this alarming insecurity?
The more we run away from state police and community police, the more embarrassment comes to this country and the leadership of this country. When you continue dodging the issue of your illness, what will be the solution of your problem, definitely, you will continue to be a sick person with that illness.
If there is a medication you are supposed to take for your health and you refuse to take it, you will continue to be a sick person.
There is no way Nigeria can be secure without having state police and local government police. Even when you have state police, the state police can have the local government units under the state police because security is local.
It’s the local people that will know the criminals of that area. It’s local people that can fight somebody studying their environment, in their bush or in their community. It is easy for people in the community to divulge information to the people they know and trust.
But, sometimes, when you bring federal police to some communities, there will always be the fear that when they divulge information to the police, they can give the criminal that information and they will kill or harm them. But the natives of that community and the people of that local government know those people who are working for the security agencies and can easily give them information.
And the natives of that community, whether they are state police or local government police, know the terrain of their forests. They can easily police their forests. Within the state police, there can be a forest guard department.
I don’t subscribe to the idea of a federal government controlling forest guards. Even though it’s a national forest, the state has the power to secure that forest for the state. Why do we continue to build a government based on over-centralization? We have a constitution that reflects three structures of government – federal, state and local government.
In the constitution, local government is residual.
And the state governor in the concurrent list is the chief security officer of the state. Even the local government chairman is the chief security officer of the local government. The exclusive list in the Constitution has the President as the commander-in-chief of armed forces.
So why should we have the governor, who is the chief security officer of a state, and he does not even have a police for his own state that they can control? Some opinions say the governor will misuse the police. What kind of argument is that? Even the federal government is misusing federal police. Amotekun has been in the system for a period of five years.
Five years now. Tell me any opponent that the state has used Amotekun against. So, for how long will we keep deceiving ourselves? I was at Yinka Odumakin’s sixth memorial service. Some activists were saying the governor will misuse the state police. I was telling them, even the federal police, the President is not using them against the governor and the local government. If such occurs, the citizens should go to court. If the executive is using the security agencies against citizens, you go to court and challenge it.
You can be detained but you get your freedom at the end of the day. And people will know that they are using that power to oppress you.
And, in one way or the other, the image of the government will be battered. That’s why we have the media. The media will publish what is happening.
If they misuse it, there will be a way out. Through defending yourself in the court of law, if you are saying the government will misuse the state police, go and remove the governor as the chief security officer of the state.
One of the problems of Nigeria is the constitution given to us by the military. The constitution is over-centralized. The content in the exclusive list was just 45. The federal government has pushed it from 45 to 68 content.
And they are taking most of the responsibility that was in the concurrent and residual lists to the exclusive list. And that is one of the reasons that we are not moving forward. For most of the government activities at the local government and state levels, the federal government is supposed to be a coordinating structure of what is happening in the state and local government. But most of these responsibilities that are supposed to be handled by the local government and the state government have been taken away from them.
What is the federal government doing with the Ministry of Agriculture? What is the federal government doing with the Ministry of Water Resources? What is the federal government doing with the Ministry of Women Affairs?
In America, with a population of about 340 or 350 million people, how many ministries do they have in their federal government? They don’t even use ministers. They use secretaries.
The ministries in the US are not even up to 20. And we have almost 47 ministers in Nigeria now with ministers of state. Until we restructure this country, we cannot get it right because one of the contents of restructuring is the security issue that we refuse to decentralise. If we don’t decentralise Nigeria’s security structure, there is no way we can have very good security in Nigeria.
How can communities defend themselves against these criminals?
There must be state police and there should be a department for community policing within state police. Or the local government should have their local government police. The local governments have enough resources. Some local governments in Lagos State get close to N2 billion as government allocation. How much will they use to arrange local government police? And when you have local government policing, state policing, this structure will reduce criminals in every state. And the burden of the federal police will reduce.
In the US, there is a federal police, state police and county police. In the U.K., they have Scotland Yard and they have municipal police.
In South Africa, they have federal police and state police. And we borrowed this constitution from the US in 1978.
Most of the content in the 1979 constitution was borrowed from the United States government. Even the Nigerian government sent the Nigeria Senate president to the US to study the constitution of the United States. Joseph Wayas was then the Senate president.
He went to the US for about three weeks or one month to study the US constitution. He brought back the constitution to Nigeria and changed the content. And that is one reason for the problems we are facing now.
