The launching of the Western Nigeria Security Network (WNSN), a joint security outfit by the governments of the six South West states, code-named Operation “Amotekun”, is generating some tensions and controversies from across some sections of the country, but we do not see any need for that.
While some people see this as an indirect way of pushing for the restructuring of the country, some others believe it to be an attempt at establishing an ethnic or regional army, and yet, in some quarters, it is interpreted to mean an open indictment of the agencies of the federal government charged with the task of safeguarding lives and property.
Perhaps, that was why the federal government security agencies had all boycotted the launching of the outfit, and why some northern youths were making noises over the inauguration of the security arrangement.
In which ever way anybody may see it, the fact still remains that the first law of nature is self preservation. It is an instinctively derived law for which every created being, whether man or the lower animal is subjected to, to seek to defend himself or itself in whatever circumstance.
Political philosophers had posited that the reason why men sought to organize themselves in society was for the protection of their lives and property, and went further to depose that any government that failed in that regard, that its citizens were justified in overthrowing it.
Constitutionally, we know that both the internal and external security of Nigerians are the responsibility of the federal government of Nigeria, but we have seen many Nigerians brutally killed, maimed, kidnapped, raped, etc., and their property destroyed, without the federal government’s security agencies doing much to protect or safeguard them.
It is either that these federal government security agencies were overwhelmed by the tasks laid before them, and therefore, incapable of safeguarding the lives and property of people entrusted into their care, or that they were negligible, nonchalant, collaborative, etc., in doing what they were supposed to do, while the people continued to be slaughtered and their valuable property destroyed.
In that case, you do not expect any reasonable human being to continue to remain docile, dormant, or unconcerned, while they are being slaughtered like animals. They must make their own arrangement to defend themselves and to protect property.
Security is a collective responsibility of everybody, and therefore, every group, every state, every individual citizen, has the natural and the constitutional right to make whatever arrangement it considers necessary to ensure that their lives and property are secured.
In a situation where all the heads of security agencies come from one particular section of the country, and where there is continued general security breakdown, there is no doubt that such other sections that have been excluded, would be feeling uncomfortable and insecure, and therefore, would begin to think of how to make its own internal security arrangement. That’s what we may be expecting from other geopolitical zones, so soon.
In other words, while we do not expect the South West Zone to be intimidated to back down from this laudable project, we however expect every other geopolitical zone in the country to emulate the South West, and set up their own internal security network.
Nigeria is a multiethnic, multicultural and mult-religious political entity, and therefore, it will be difficult to have one single security arrangement that would fit into the system, or that would satisfy the security arrangement of the entire country, at the same time.
In Enugu State, since the the Forest Guard arrangement introduced by the state government, it appears that the frequent cases of kidnapping have subsided. This is because those who were recruited as members of Forest Guards are familiar with the terrain, and therefore, capable of squaring up against those who were making the people uncomfortable.
