Ethnic warriors have never been far off the Nigerian political space, plying causes that typically locate them at odds with the law but simultaneously in warm embrace of whatever kindred group they are championing its interest. Thus, the kinsman-warrior poses a constant dilemma: under strict legal framework and from the prism of the establishment, he is an outlaw who should be harshly repressed or altogether taken out of circulation; but to those whose cause he champions, he is a hero and rallying point of group emancipation. It is typically like walking a tightrope seeking to contain the ethnic warrior without upsetting the fragile tolerance of his kindred group for the challenged status quo.
Some ethnic warriors commit mission suicide by overreaching themselves in aggression and alienating moderates in the group they hold the banner for; and where those moderates are in the majority, the mission gets effectively disavowed and the warrior isolated. That, for instance, is the fate of Nnamdi Kanu’s cause with the separatist Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) by which he has turned on Southeast elite who believe in a more reasoned approach to dealing with the Igbo question. The last time he pushed too hard, IPOB was outlawed – not just by the central government against which he is mounting a challenge, but with eager domestication by governments of Southeast states where he should ordinarily find sympathy. Now he is a loose-ranging fugitive, and the rump of his followers perceived as mere brigands who now and then disrupt public peace.
In modern Yoruba history, there were also ethnic warriors. The cause of self-determination and self-defense was vigorously waged by the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC), which was formed in 1994 as a socio-cultural platform to promote Yoruba values. The group subsequently transformed into a reputed local security squad. But its members faced constant harassment and brutal repression by the police, who seized the opportunity of OPC’s reputation for violence that was not helped by factional slug-outs between loyalists of the late Frederick Fasehun on one hand and those Gani Adams on the other. Both leaders were themselves frequently arrested and held in prolonged incarceration by the police, and the group was proscribed in 1999 by the presidency of Olusegun Obasanjo who had little tolerance for its modus operandi. Perhaps the height of the hostility was the police declaring Adams wanted for his faction’s involvement in violent clashes in January 2000, with then Police Inspector-General Musiliu Smith placing a 100,000 naira bounty on his head. Adams was eventually arrested in August 2001. In their post-prison years, Fasehun and Adams were brought to the dialogue table by Yoruba elders who wringed out a fragile truce between the OPC factions; and things got even better for the group when the police worked out accommodation for it by enlisting its members as recognised local vigilante in the battle against insecurity in the Southwest. Fasehun died on 1st December, 2018 at the ripe age of 83 years while Adams, on 14th October, 2017 was named the 15th Aare Ona Kakanfo of Yorubaland by Alaafin of Oyo Oba Lamidi Adeyemi III. They remained ethnic icons.
Move over Adams, a new kinsman-warrior is in town. Yoruba rights activist Sunday Adeyemo, popularly known as Sunday Igboho, has for long been active in the local politics of his native Oyo State, but he scaled up into national prominence recently when he served a seven-day notice on Fulani herdsmen in Igangan, Ibarapa north council area of Oyo State, to leave the community or be expelled. Igboho isn’t the typical self-determination champion, but rather a crusader for safety and survival amidst besieging security challenges that government seemed incapable or unwilling to take down. In other words, he is an apostle of self-help, with his notice coming in the wake of heightened incidents of killings, kidnappings and other security violations in that area for which he held criminal herdsmen liable. His intervention was fundamentally irregular because he is neither an agent of government nor an accredited security pointsman to have assumed such responsibility. Still, his cause found resonance with the community folk, such that he attracted strong following and a higher level of credibility among them even than the regular agents of government.
There were indications the appeal of Igboho’s cause was not limited to Igangan community folk, that it as well resonated with a section of the Yoruba elite who apparently shared the concern he voiced over worsening insecurity in the Southwest linked to herdsmen criminality. Besides, either by design or coincidence, he issued his ultimatum to herdsmen in Ibarapa area on the heels of a similar directive by Ondo State Governor Rotimi Akeredolu who gave a seven-day notice for unregistered herdsmen illegally occupying Ondo’s forest reserves to regularise their status by registering or vacate those forests. Akeredolu had served that notice in his state’s bid to tackle the challenges of insecurity linked with criminal herdsmen; but the Presidency had snarled back, ruling him out of order and in violation of the constitutional leave for all Nigerians to reside and do business wherever they choose across the country without inhibition. The Ondo helmsman clarified and insisted on this directive, necessitating a meeting between state governors and the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association (MACBAN) early last week in Akure, where it was agreed that free-range grazing be stopped, night grazing and underage herding be banned, and modern methods like ranching and grazing reserves be adopted by herders as best practice.
Igboho made no room for negotiations as he raged against insecurity in his native community, which government was not getting a handle on. But his quit notice to herders was obviously an affront to constituted authority, hence Oyo State Governor Seyi Makinde warned that government would not tolerate persons stoking ethnic tension under the guise of protecting Yoruba interest and, without naming names, invited the police to arrest such people and treat them like common criminals. Even the Presidency was reported saying Police Inspector-General Mohammed Adamu had ordered that Igboho be arrested and transferred to Abuja. The threat of arrest did not deter him, however, as he stormed Igangan at the expiration of his notice to expel the Fulani community – precipitating a communal clash and forcing the Serkin Fulani to flee. Besides the townsfolk who rallied to his side, Igboho named prominent Southwest monarchs and other Yoruba elite whose backing he claimed to have. And apparently bolstered by the Igangan feat, he vowed to extend his mission to all Southwest states and Kwara.
Security agents’ restraint in not cracking down on this ethnic warrior or pulling him in was wise, because it would only have accentuated his heroic profile and given deeper resonance to his cause. Still, Igboho taking the law into his own hands the manner he did was lawlessness writ large in a society governed by laws. Thankfully, one of the names he dropped as patron-backers, eminent lawyer Femi Falana (SAN), has disavowed him, saying under Nigerian laws, even a squatter cannot be ejected, and that “a private citizen cannot wake up and say anybody should leave his community…not even government.” Falana also argued, rightly in my view, that criminality is an individual enterprise and you do not blacklist a whole ethnic stock for the criminality of some individuals within that stock.
The point has been repeatedly made that government’s failure in ensuring security for citizens gave rise to the Igboho phenomenon. But the challenge is also one that only government is well located to address; hence Ooni of Ife Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi, whose name Igboho also dropped as backing his cause, urged him to restraint. “He (Igboho) has done well and the world has heard him, but everything should be done in moderation. We know that bandits are everywhere. He shouldn’t take the laws into his hands. We have laws in this country and we should follow it. Let the people chosen do and follow what they are supposed to do,” he was reported saying. Wise words. Only to add that self-help unilateralism is a fast track to the Hobbesian jungle and must not be encouraged. Igboho has had his say, let him not push too hard.
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