As Amotekun is seen as a panacea to our current state of insecurity that has overwhelmed the establishment, maybe the bill establishing the outfit should involve the creation of mobile courts

By Ayo Akinfe

(1) Today, the Lagos State House of Assembly shall begin analysing the Amotekun bill at the committee stage. This is the sixth state to do so as four others have already gone through the bill and are due to pass a final vote on it this morning, while in Ekiti State, the matter has been concluded and just awaits the governor’s signature

(2) I doubt if anybody expected Amotekun would be so popular across Nigeria when the idea was first floated. Apart from a few people with mischievous agendas, there appears to be unanimity among Nigerians of all ethnic groups that some sort of regional security arrangement needs to be put in place to curb the current incessant crime wave

(3) Amotekun just proves that Nigerians can unite around a common cause when they want to. Everyone is affected by kidnapping, banditry, armed robbery, etc, so there is no justification for anyone to oppose a regional security intelligence outfit. I expect bodies similar to Amotekun to be established across all geo-political zones before the end of the year

(4) I suspect all the five other geo-political zones are waiting to see how Amotekun pans out before launching similar bodies. That is actually the right way to do things as in sane climes, you always have a pilot study first before you launch a main programme

(5) One thing nobody has dared mention so far is that the reason Amotekun has been so well received is because it was launched in the southwest. Had it been launched in the northwest, it would have been seen as part of an Islamisation agenda and had it been launched in the southeast, it would have been seen as part of a secessionist agenda

(6) I hope the six governors of the southwest realise that this places a serious burden upon them going forward. They have to initiate all the state and regional programmes required to get Nigeria out of her current morass simply because the rest of the country will be suspicious of these initiatives come from elsewhere. The brutal truth is that the average Nigerian lives in fear of both Fulani and Igbo domination, so is suspicious of initiatives that come from the northwest and southeast

(7) Because the south-south, north-central and north-east geo-political zones are highly complex, made up of numerous ethnic groups, they lack the clout to speak with one voice like the other three zones. To prove this, you just need to ask yourselves why the north-central geo-political zone, which has borne the brunt of the murderous attacks of Fulani herdsmen was not the first to launch an Amotekun outfit

(8) Going forward as a nation, Nigeria needs the six southwest governors to come up with similar initiatives on economic diversification, social housing, building regional and urban railway networks, establishing local health programmes, constructing sea ports, eradicating illiteracy, developing tourism, expanding manufacturing, revolutionising agriculture, etc. I can see the rest of the country latching on if their programmes are successful

(9) Given the backlog of criminal cases in our courts, however, I would have liked the Amotekun bill to include the provision for mobile courts to try criminals. One good thing that came out of the Sharia controversy was that the Sharia courts took over all the cases of petty theft in the 12 states where it operates. Consequently, all the Muslim pickpockets, shoplifters, cat burglars, etc had their cases taken away from the high courts. I think we need something similar with the Amotekun bill

(10) If President Buhari wants to prove he is serious about security, once Amotekun is up and running, he should send a regional security bill to the National Assembly, giving federal backing to the initiative. At the moment, we are hopelessly overwhelmed by insecurity, so the rest of the nation is desperately looking up to Amotekun for solutions