First, Gani Adams’ so-called letter to South West governors, for a mandate to “flush out” Fulani kidnappers in the region, was met with a yawn it eminently deserved.
Atavistic fears — or resent — hardly harbour the rigour to crack a contemporary problem, not the least a hardy security one.
Then, the new presidential concession on state police. That has got to be the most nimble thinking, since the military invaded the political space in January 1966.
Formalizing state police is the Nigerian state’s clinical riposte to the opportunistic din by non-state hustlers, craving relevance. Ignore too, the clatter of naysayers: mainly ex-police(wo)men, hung up on the old security regime, with its central near-paralysis.
Such play up past and present fears. In truth, such fears should be noted; and poured into the crucible of air-tight legislations that will re-federalize the Police system; but ensure state police doesn’t end up the wayward rod of cynical governors.
But back to Adams and co. If your thinking flares and freezes with cross-ethnic wars, how can you be part of a security thinking for a modern, multi-ethnic, multi-faith state?
Still, you’d be amazed at Adams’ penchant for the over-reach: the hubris that sank many Aare Ona Kakanfo — an irony totally lost on the Kakanfo latest modern mascot.
By the way — as Ripples earlier pointed out — there’s hardly anything as Aare Ona Kakanfo of Yorubaland. It was originally an Oyo title, imposed on Oyo’s vassal and tributary kingdoms in the Yoruba country, under the Oyo Empire.
The Ijebu, for instance, never came under the Oyo imperial yoke. Yet, they are no less Yoruba. So, isn’t an “Aare Ona Kakanfo of Yorubaland” — a Yorubaland that includes the Ijebu country — a laughable historical fallacy?
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Yet, from this presumption issued Adams’ letter seeking governors’ fiat to pacify the South West of Fulani felons. But why would any right-thinking governor, worth his mandate, surrender his security authority to some non-state cells?
Again, it’s an overreach, which bizarre irony again seems to escape Adams. Yet, tragic overreaches, bordering on reckless hubris, plagued the paths, and triggered the tragic ends, of many previous Kakanfo — hence the title’s poisoned chalice.
By the way, Adams would appear yoked in the lower rung of a neo-atavistic chain: nay-sayers thundering from newspaper columns; as TV anchors and as radio presenters, milking present angsts to proclaim past whims, as sure future catastrophes!
That, to be sure, is not alien to a democracy, with a flower of contesting ideas.
Yet, emotively gloating over current challenges and pushing preferred Armageddon hardly equates thinking through policy options and proffering rigorous alternatives. That’s what the media should do. Unfortunately, the reverse is the case, in many cases. The people — that crave guidance in troubled times — are the worse for it.
That’s why a Gani Adams would proffer antediluvian solutions to a modern problem and hope to get traction. But again, it’s voyage to nowhere.
Back to previous Kakanfo and tragic overreaches, however.
Ilorin’s Afonja leveraged his life-long beef with Alaafin Aole Arogangan to supplant his Oyo imperial state. Afonja, as Kakanfo, was Oyo’s military guard(ian)-in-chief. But for his treachery, he enlisted Alimi, his Fulani friend and his corps of quoranic teachers-cum-warriors.
They supplanted Oyo all right but Afonja’s hitherto proud Yoruba town, founded by his great grandfather, Laderin, fell under Fulani liege. He not only died tragically betrayed, he become a historic study in self-destruct perfidy.
Afonja was only the fourth Ilorin Yoruba ruler, after Laderin, Pasin and Alagbin, Afonja’s father, in that order. After him, the Fulani, though of a mixed Yoruba-Fulani breed, took over.
Ijaye’s Kurunmi perhaps had legitimate grouses against Alaafin Adelu. But he too overreached himself by undermining Adelu’s authority, though Adelu’s father, Abiodun, made Kurunmi his Kakanfo.
So, when the Ibadan army, under the Alaafin’s diktat, stormed his Ijaye redoubt, and Kurunmi’s five sons died in battle on the same day, the evocative tragedy of Kurunmi was wrought in sickening colour!
Ibadan’s own Latoosa had decisioned Efunsetan Aniwura, the Iyalode and Ibadan native society’s opposer-in-chief to Latoosa’s not-so-hidden power grab schemes. To him, the Olubadan, was a “woman” because the Ibadan constitution forbade the Baale from going to war.
Yes, Efunsetan was down but the Ibadan constitution held. So, off went Latoosa to “end all wars in the Yoruba country” simply because the intrepid Fabunmi, of Okemesi, had the temerity to behead an Ibadan viceroy, Oyepetun, for defiling Fabunmi’s wife.
That was September 1877. But by 1893 when the smoke of Kiriji, the Yoruba Civil War, had cleared, the Oyo Empire, which the Ibadan opportunistic army of war spoils claimed to defend, had itself fallen — to a more ruthless British colonial army.
Latoosa himself never died in battle. But he fell ill and died at the tail end of the dire 16-year stalemate — a stalemate that tasted as defeat to the Ibadan army, but victory to the Ekiti Parapo battle-hardened troops; that called the bluff of the Ibadan bullies.
Again, the Kakanfo and their tragic overreaches of missions impossible!
Gani Adams appears not so different. In his letter, he boasted of having “troops and logistics to flush out undesirable elements” — great! But troops and logistics! What law gives a non-state player the fiat to harbour “troops and logistics”?
Even assuming without conceding — as the lawyers would say — that Gani’s ancestral “army” worked this magical wonder, how sustainable will it be, if the situation remains unchanged Nigeria-wide?
So long for quaint and romantic solutions to all-too-real problems! Still, you can’t blame Adams for his passion and love for his native Yorubaland. In doing that however, he should be wary of talking himself into needless trouble.
The truth is Nigeria’s security challenge isn’t a Fulani versus Yoruba ancestral feud; or the Junkun versus the Idoma, in Ajoche: that excellent epic serial beamed on DSTV; or even Fulani versus Hausa, which a research finding has fingered as the genesis of banditry and sundry violence in the North West.
Fulani herders accused some Hausa criminals of cattle rustling. Hausa farmers countered with Fulani herders wilfully destroying their crops. Both resorted to fearsome arms to settle scores. Enter, the current security meltdown!
So, Nigeria’s insecurity nightmare is the criminal, of whichever ethnic hue, versus the rest of us — not some mascots settling ancient scores, real or imagined.
The logical answer, after a rigorous diagnosis, is re-federalizing the police for more trained numbers and spread in police cadres. State police is it.
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