We have heard stories, in moonlight tales, of ancient emperors who guarded themselves with ‘Kiniun, Ekun and Amotekun’ (lion, tiger, leopard). We heard how these emperors threw their subjects who opposed their tyrannical rule or opponents who sought to take over their throne to the wild animals to be devoured.
In the wild, wild western part of Nigeria, a para-security outfit having the nomenclature of a wild animal has been inaugurated. The main aim of founding the outfit is to secure the South West from the dangers of banditry, kidnapping and insurgency. This is indeed a laudable initiative!
However, the first sign that Amotekun, as laudable as it’s for the security of the South West, seems to have been designed to be a pawn in the hands of state governors is the arrangement that each state in the South West would be responsible for payments of salaries and provisions of logistics to the part of the para-security outfits allocated to them. Most seekers of governorship office turns into emperors when they assume office, especially with the connivance of their parties’ constitution and the federal constitution, which make a governor a lone voice of authority in his party and in his state. It becomes a matter of ‘he who pays the piper dictates the tune’ as having Amotekun under financial dependence of state governors will give the governors the liberty of having own security apparatus to hound opposition and critics of his administration into submission.
I think the better arrangement should have been for the SW Governors to have a common purse domiciled with the DAWN Commission while payments of salaries and provisions of logistics to Amotekun should be centrally administered. This will engender more cooperation among the states with regard to regional integration which purpose DAWN Commission is serving. When you have governors from different parties contributing to a common purse to be able to fund the para-security outfit, it becomes extremely difficult for the governors to use the outfit to settle political scores, to hound opposition and critics and to manipulate elections.
This self-serving arrangement of salary payments and provisions of logistics by the governors must be rethink if the idea behind establishing Amotekun is truly to secure the South West.
