By Hashim Yussuf Amao
The most dangerous security organisation is not necessarily the one that begins with evil intentions; sometimes, it is the one that begins with a noble excuse and is allowed to grow beyond the discipline of law, accountability and institutional restraint. That is why the emergence of Iru Ekun Security Network, the forest-security initiative associated with Sunday Igboho, deserves something more serious than applause from its admirers or condemnation from its enemies. The question is not whether Yorubas and Yoruba farmers deserve protection from kidnappers. They plainly do. The question is what happens when a private, ethnically identified security network acquires men, money, territory, intelligence, political connections and eventually coercive power. History has shown that the road from protector to predator can be surprisingly short.
The South-West already possesses Amotekun, a state-backed regional security structure created precisely because conventional policing has struggled to provide adequate protection in rural communities. Yet Amotekun has repeatedly faced questions concerning funding, equipment, welfare and institutional support. Reports from different states have documented various difficulties, including inadequate equipment, employment documentation and welfare concerns, although the exact condition differs from state to state. In Ondo, for instance, operatives complained in 2025 about the absence of formal appointment letters years after recruitment, while later arrangements were announced concerning pensions, health insurance and NSITF coverage. The contradiction is almost painfully Nigerian: a legally constituted security institution can be struggling for institutional nourishment while a new private network is gathering public enthusiasm. Why build another security architecture before properly strengthening the one already recognised by government?
The financial question is even more disturbing because history teaches that armed organisations do not necessarily disappear when their original source of money disappears. Across Africa and elsewhere, community militias and vigilante organisations have sometimes migrated from protection into extortion, organised crime, political enforcement or other forms of predation when accountability weakened and legitimate funding became unreliable. Research on vigilante groups in Southern Nigeria has documented cases in which organisations established against crime became involved in extortion, illegal detention, torture and killings. Research into Nigeria’s North-East has similarly shown how some militias became entangled in the local war economy. The proper warning, therefore, is not that every unfunded militia automatically becomes a terrorist organisation. That would be historically lazy. The more defensible warning is that an armed workforce whose legitimate livelihood disappears does not lose its weapons, networks, territorial knowledge or appetite for income merely because its funding does. A hungry gun does not become harmless simply because yesterday’s financier has gone home.
That is where Iru Ekun’s reported scale becomes significant. Sunday Igboho has claimed that more than 80,000 volunteers have registered with the network, although that figure has not been independently audited and should therefore be treated as a claim rather than an established membership statistic. Still, imagine the institutional weight of even a fraction of such a number. Thousands of men possessing local knowledge, community contacts, intelligence channels and security training would constitute a substantial social force. If that force remained firmly under law, professionally trained, transparently funded and institutionally accountable, its existence would be one matter. If it became personally loyal to a charismatic leader, territorially organised, financially opaque, politically mobilised and increasingly armed, another matter entirely would have been created. The difference between a security network and a private power structure is not always visible on the first day.
The history surrounding Igboho himself also cannot simply be erased from the conversation. His activities in Soka have previously been surrounded by controversies involving land disputes, transport interests and clashes involving people associated with him. Those reports must be handled honestly: allegations should not be converted into convictions, and some contemporary reporting actually described Igboho as intervening against alleged land grabbers rather than participating in the land grabbing himself. Other reports, however, contained allegations concerning associates, transport collections and informal levies. None of this proves that Iru Ekun is destined for criminality. It does, however, provide a legitimate reason for demanding unusually strong safeguards before the authority of the network is expanded. A man may have changed, an organisation may be different from its founder’s past, and allegations may remain unproven, but institutional memory is not paranoia. It is prudence.
This is also why the comparison with NURTW, though imperfect, deserves examination. Iru Ekun is not NURTW, and describing it as NURTW would be factually premature. The concern lies in the possible evolution of the structure. Protection can become organisation; organisation can become territorial presence; territorial presence can generate financial collections; financial collections can create patronage; patronage can produce political loyalty; political loyalty can eventually create coercive authority. That progression is not inevitable, but Nigeria has witnessed enough examples of informal power acquiring territorial and political influence to make complacency foolish. If Iru Ekun ever begins collecting compulsory levies, operating informal checkpoints, dispensing its own justice, maintaining political enforcement units or demanding loyalty from communities, the distinction between security organisation and private power will have begun to collapse.
Then comes politics, where the danger becomes even more delicate. Igboho’s political journey has been remarkably complicated. He became nationally prominent through Yoruba self-determination agitation and, at different times, adopted positions sharply critical of prominent Yoruba politicians. Yet he now publicly supports President Bola Tinubu’s 2027 re-election. That creates a question that cannot be waved away: what happens when the leader associated with a large Yoruba-oriented security network becomes an active partisan political actor? A security organisation can protect citizens. It cannot legitimately become an instrument for telling those citizens whom they must elect. Any claim that Igboho specifically said “all Yorubas must vote Tinubu” should, however, be independently sourced before being presented as a direct quotation.
But there is now another dimension that deserves equally serious scrutiny: religion. The danger is not that Isese itself is inherently dangerous. It is a legitimate Yoruba religious and cultural tradition, and its practitioners possess the same right to lawful religious freedom as Muslims and Christians. The danger begins when a security organisation becomes associated with the defence of one religious constituency, particularly if its leadership is itself publicly identified with that religious tradition. That possibility becomes more difficult to dismiss after the recent controversy involving Abdulazeez Adegbola, popularly known as Tani Ọlọhun, an advocate of Isese. On 25 August 2026, police officers from Kwara attempted to arrest him at his Ibadan residence. The Oyo State Police Command subsequently stated that the officers were acting on a warrant issued by the Upper Ilorin Magistrates’ Court over allegations concerning conduct likely to cause a breach of public peace, and said the warrant followed an alleged breach of earlier bail conditions.
Sunday Igboho intervened during the attempted arrest, and reports described a confrontation involving residents and the police. The underlying case reportedly concerns allegations arising from a social-media video that critics said mocked Islamic prayer and could inflame religious tensions, although those allegations remain matters for the courts rather than conclusions to be imposed by newspaper commentary. This incident does not, by itself, prove that Igboho was acting to protect Isese as a religion, nor does it prove that Iru Ekun has a religious agenda. But it creates a legitimate institutional question: if the founder of a large Yoruba security network intervenes in a police operation involving a controversial Isese advocate, how can the public be assured that the organisation will never be used to protect one religious constituency against another? That question becomes particularly important when the network is headed by a figure who is himself associated publicly with Yoruba traditional religious identity.
The consequences of getting that distinction wrong could be catastrophic. Imagine Muslims concluding that Yoruba traditionalists have developed an armed structure capable of protecting their religious interests. Imagine Christians subsequently creating their own community security organisation because they fear being left exposed. Imagine another religious community doing the same. Suddenly Nigeria would not have one Iru Ekun. It would have competing religious security networks. A Muslim version here, a Christian version there, an Isese version somewhere else, each claiming to be defensive, each insisting that the other side started it, and each gradually gathering men, money, weapons and political patrons. At that point, a kidnapping problem would have been transformed into something far more poisonous: religious militarisation.
That is how a country can stumble towards religious conflict without anybody formally declaring war. Nobody wakes up one morning and announces, “Today we shall begin a religious civil war.” It usually begins with smaller sentences: “We need to protect ourselves.” Then another community answers, “We need our own people to protect us.” Then comes, “We cannot trust their security men.” Then, “Our religion is under threat.” Then politicians discover that frightened populations are extraordinarily easy to mobilise. Before long, the gun is no longer merely protecting the farm. It is protecting an identity. Once the gun begins to believe that identity is its jurisdiction, the republic has entered dangerous territory.
Nigeria should be particularly sensitive to this possibility because religion already intersects with political competition, communal identity and insecurity. The country does not need Christian militias, Muslim militias or traditionalist militias competing for territorial influence. The thought itself should be treated as a warning siren. If Muslims created an equivalent organisation because they feared an Isese-oriented security network, and Christians subsequently created another because they feared both, the resulting competition could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Each group would describe its own organisation as defensive while perceiving the other’s organisation as offensive. That is one of the oldest mechanisms through which communal security dilemmas become violent.
The ethnic dimension is equally combustible. Igboho has insisted that Iru Ekun is intended to confront criminals rather than any ethnic group, and that distinction must be respected. Yet the perceptions of other communities matter. Reports have already recorded concerns among some Fulani residents about possible ethnic targeting, while Igboho has rejected the idea that his campaign is directed against Fulani people as a group. In a country as ethnically sensitive as Nigeria, the difference between fighting a Fulani kidnapper and treating Fulani identity as evidence of criminality must remain absolutely inviolable. One criminal cannot become a passport for collective suspicion. If an innocent civilian were wrongly killed, detained or assaulted by security operatives and the incident were subsequently interpreted as an ethnic attack, retaliation could follow. A local confrontation could become a communal confrontation; a communal confrontation could acquire political sponsors; political sponsors could mobilise rival communities.
History provides grim examples of what happens when communal identity, political grievance and organised coercive force become intertwined. The Lebanese Civil War was not caused by the existence of one militia, but competing sectarian militias, political fragmentation, foreign intervention and institutional breakdown helped turn communal divisions into prolonged warfare. Yugoslavia’s collapse similarly involved political disintegration, ethnic mobilisation, competing territorial claims and armed organisations, producing wars of extraordinary brutality. Nigeria’s own civil war cannot honestly be reduced to the activities of ethnic militias because its causes included coups, massacres, political crisis, competing territorial claims and institutional collapse. Yet the Nigerian experience demonstrates something important: once political identity becomes militarised, returning politics to ordinary disagreement becomes much harder.
This does not mean that Iru Ekun will cause a civil war. There is no evidence from which such a prediction could responsibly be made. But civil war is not the appropriate threshold at which prevention should begin. The relevant warning signs appear much earlier: ethnic profiling, political mobilisation, independent armed capacity, rival security commands, communal retaliation, opaque financing, declining state authority and the normalisation of violence. Add religious mobilisation to that mixture and the danger becomes even more serious.
There is another paradox that deserves attention. An Iru Ekun that becomes highly successful could itself create a problem. Suppose its intelligence becomes better than that of local police, its volunteers become more trusted than government security personnel and communities begin calling its commanders before contacting the authorities. The organisation would then acquire something more valuable than uniforms: practical legitimacy. At that point, the question would become almost philosophical: Who actually keeps order? The police? Amotekun? The army? The state government? Or Iru Ekun? A democratic state cannot comfortably maintain an ambiguous answer to that question. The state’s monopoly over legitimate coercive force is not a decorative constitutional principle. It is one of the foundations upon which public order rests.
And here lies perhaps the most profound danger of all: what happens when funding stops? Imagine a large security network whose members have become accustomed to money, authority, weapons, recognition and local influence. Then imagine government support dries up, donations disappear or political patronage changes hands. The organisation might disband peacefully. It might also fragment. Some members might return to farming, trading or ordinary employment. Others might exploit the skills and relationships acquired through the organisation. A commander might begin collecting “protection fees”. Another might enter smuggling. Another might attach himself to a politician. Another might recruit unemployed young men into a private force. The original security problem could thereby be replaced by a new one. The most frightening moment might therefore not be when Iru Ekun is created, but when its members discover that the institution on which they built their livelihood no longer has money to pay them.
This is precisely why Amotekun’s welfare matters. A security operative is not merely a uniform. He is a human being whose family must eat, whose medical bills must be paid and whose life should be insured because the job itself may place him in mortal danger. If salaries are poor, insurance is absent, equipment is inadequate and retirement arrangements are uncertain, the state is effectively asking people to risk their lives while treating their lives as expendable. That is morally indefensible and strategically foolish. If community security is genuinely necessary, its personnel should be properly paid, insured, trained, equipped and integrated into a clear chain of command. The South-West should not create a situation in which the legally recognised security organisation is neglected while a private alternative becomes the more attractive institution.
Nor should the answer be simply to destroy every community security initiative. Rural communities possess local knowledge that federal security agencies cannot magically manufacture. Farmers know forest routes; villagers know suspicious movements; communities know who belongs locally and who has recently appeared. Properly regulated community intelligence can therefore be invaluable. But intelligence is not the same thing as vigilantism, and community participation is not the same thing as private armed authority. What the South-West requires is integration, not institutional competition.
Iru Ekun therefore needs a financial and institutional architecture before it needs geographical expansion. Who pays its personnel? Who audits its finances? Who supplies weapons? Who records those weapons? Who investigates complaints? Who prosecutes members accused of abuse? Who prevents political parties from financing it? Who prevents traditional institutions from converting cultural authority into operational command? Who insures its members? Who pays compensation when an innocent civilian is harmed? What happens to its personnel if the organisation is dissolved? And perhaps the most uncomfortable question of all: who guards the guards?
The danger is not Isese, Islam or Christianity. The danger is the militarisation of any religion. A traditionalist carrying his beliefs into peaceful civic life is not a security threat. A Muslim practising his faith is not a security threat. A Christian practising Christianity is not a security threat. But when religious identity becomes attached to organised coercive power, every other community begins to calculate its own survival. That calculation is where peaceful pluralism begins to crack.
That is why the Tani Ọlọhun episode should be treated not as proof of a religious conspiracy, but as a warning about appearances, boundaries and institutional safeguards. The state must ensure that an individual cannot acquire the practical ability to decide which court order is obeyed and which police operation is resisted simply because he commands sufficient popular or organisational influence. Equally, religious controversies should be handled through courts and lawful institutions, not through rival religious mobilisation. If a person is accused of insulting Islam, the answer should be lawful adjudication. If a Muslim is accused of insulting Isese or Christianity, the answer should be lawful adjudication. The same law must stand above every shrine, mosque, church, politician, militia and charismatic leader.
Plato’s old political question remains mercilessly relevant: who will guard the guardians? A society that cannot answer that question has not created security; it has merely redistributed insecurity.
Yoruba land deserves security. Its farmers deserve to sleep without listening for kidnappers. Its forests should not become sanctuaries for criminals. Its communities should not be abandoned because conventional institutions have failed to protect them adequately. But the cure must not quietly acquire the symptoms of the disease. Iru Ekun must never become an ethnic army, a political enforcement wing, a religious militia, a private taxation network or another NURTW-like structure operating beyond effective accountability. If Muslims respond by creating a Muslim equivalent, Christians respond with another, and traditionalists respond by strengthening theirs, Nigeria could find itself constructing the machinery of religious confrontation while everyone insists that their own machinery was created merely for protection. And that is why the question before Yoruba leaders, governors, traditional rulers, religious leaders and the Federal Government is not whether Sunday Igboho is hero or villain. Personality worship, whether positive or negative, is a poor substitute for institutional thinking.
The question is much larger: Can a security organisation created around a powerful personality be made so lawful, transparent, politically neutral, religiously neutral and accountable that its future cannot become more dangerous than the insecurity it was established to defeat?
If the answer is yes, let the safeguards be written, funded and enforced. If the answer is uncertain, then the uncertainty itself is a warning. Because history’s most painful lesson is not that every protector becomes a predator. It is that when the protector acquires more power than the law can restrain, society eventually discovers that it has created another threat while trying to defeat the first.
The wiser course, therefore, is not to keep multiplying security networks until Yoruba land becomes a forest of competing uniforms, but to strengthen the institution already created to protect it. Amotekun should be properly and generously funded, its personnel paid substantial and dignified salaries, equipped with modern and appropriate weapons and ammunition for confronting terrorists and kidnappers, provided with complete uniforms from headgear to boots, and covered by comprehensive life and health insurance. Their children should also be given meaningful educational support, because a man who knows that his family will not be abandoned if he dies protecting others will approach danger with a different kind of courage. Welfare is not charity to a security operative; it is part of the security architecture itself. Give the Amotekun officer decent pay, proper equipment, insurance, training, housing support where possible and educational protection for his children, and the state will not merely have bought uniforms and weapons; it will have purchased loyalty, morale, professionalism and institutional commitment.
There is also a national-security argument for this approach that should not be ignored. The multiplication of ethnically identified security networks can create precisely the insecurity they were established to defeat. If Iru Ekun were perceived as an exclusively Yoruba coercive force, other communities could begin demanding their own equivalents, perhaps in the North, among religious constituencies or elsewhere, not necessarily because they desire conflict but because they fear being left defenceless. That is the classic security dilemma: one community’s attempt to make itself safer can make another community feel less safe, prompting an arms race of identity. Ethnic profiling could then provoke retaliation, retaliation could generate counter-retaliation, and politicians or extremists could exploit the resulting anger. Nobody needs to announce a national war for the machinery of one to begin assembling itself. Nigeria should therefore strengthen Amotekun, integrate it properly with the police, NSCDC and other lawful security agencies, and make its personnel sufficiently equipped and respected to defend the South-West without creating parallel ethnic armies. Yoruba land needs stronger security, not more competing centres of coercive power; it needs disciplined institutions, not armed improvisation; and it needs protection that makes the farmer safer without making the neighbour suspicious. The leopard should be trained to guard the village, not allowed to become another animal from which the village must eventually be protected.
Hashim Yussuf Amao is an award-winning young Nigerian author and a socio-political analyst.
