IG’s Deceptive Ban on Vigilance Services

  POLITICAL NOTES

It has now become a routine for the Inspector General of Police (IG), Mr. Kayode Egbetokun, to ban state vigilance services, which were established nationwide to help the police address insecurity.

The police have increasingly demonstrated lack of capacity to tackle internal security threats, leading to the creation of the state vigilance services and the involvement of the armed forces in the discharge of the statutory functions of the police. 

But the same police find it convenient to ban these local vigilante services during governorship elections as if these local vigilantes are responsible for rigging elections in the country.

 Just like he did in Edo State during the last governorship election when the state Vigilance Service was banned, the IG last week also banned the Western Nigeria Security Network codenamed Amotekun and other vigilante corps from participating in yesterday’s Ondo State governorship election.

While addressing stakeholders in Akure, the IG said a total of 43,157 security personnel comprising all the federal security agencies would be deployed to the state.

Surprisingly, these are the same federal security agencies that have not been able to save the state from bandits.

It was the failure of these federal security agencies to tackle insecurity during President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration that led to the agitation for state police and also led to the establishment of Amotekun in South-west, Ebubeagu in the South-east and civilian joint task force in the North.

Despite the fact that Amotekun operatives are not allowed to bear sophisticated arms like the police, they have been able to successfully checkmate the activities of bandits and other criminal elements killing, raping and kidnapping the residents of the state and destroying their farmlands.

Having performed better than the federal police due to their better understanding of the local environment, the Amotekun operatives should have been made part of the security architecture during the election.

What moral authority does the police have to ban state vigilante services during elections? Banning them during elections by the IG is deceptive and hypocritical because the various reports of local and international election observers have indicated that it is corrupt officers in the police, other federal security agencies and INEC that politicians use to perpetrate electoral frauds and subvert the wishes of the voters, and not local vigilantes.