The Senate, on Monday, promised to amend the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, to assign roles to traditional rulers in the country.
The President of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio, gave the assurance when he received in audience, the royal fathers across the 36 States of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja.
Akpabio gave the assurance while responding to requests by the traditional rulers, saying that it had become necessary for the royal fathers to exercise constitutional roles in governance, particularly on security matters.
His words: “The request that you have made before us is not strange. It is something that if we had the opportunity to visit all of you whilst we were struggling to take over the leadership of the Senate, we probably would have made it as one of the manifestoes and say, please we want royal blessings but before you give us the blessings we promise you to definitely do everything possible to work with the House of Representatives and all our colleagues to create a role in our Constitution for the traditional rulers.
“On a personal note and from the part of the country I come from, my grandfather was one of you. In those days there was what they called an indirect rule system. He was one of the warrant chiefs. He was a little bit on the powerful side. But before then, he was actually by heritage a traditional father.
“So, I won’t say that my name is Prince Godswill Akpabio. No. I will just say that my name is Senator Godswill Akpabio. But I share in your thoughts and as far as I am concerned, we have a convergence of thoughts in our minds. And there are many reasons for your request. I didn’t mention that my grandfather had only 29 wives and 36 concubines – Okuku Udo Akpabio. …So I am part of you, maybe when I retire as Senate President, I probably would be sitting down amongst you to discuss.
“I don’t know of my colleagues, but for me on a personal note, I believe that if traditional rulers are given their proper role and proper placement in society, it would help us a lot in curbing the insecurity that we are seeing today.
He said that giving traditional rulers roles in the Constitution would tremendously help in curbing insecurity in the country, as they would be able to use their subjects for intelligence and information gathering.
“There is no society that does not know the bad eggs but sometimes it is difficult for you because you are not even given security yourselves. So, even when information comes before you, you find it difficult to give it to the security agents because even the security agents themselves may be double agents.
“So, giving out information may even endanger your lives. But if you had a role to play, you probably would have taken the steps to curb the menace before it went out of hand.
“As we grapple with insecurity in the country, the President, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, is very determined to ensure that Nigerians can sleep with their two eyes closed. He is thinking out of the box on what to do and so far the results are beginning to show.
The President of the Senate expressed optimism in the ability of the new security Chiefs recently confirmed by the Senate to tackle the security challenges in the country.
He, however, noted that without adequate intelligence and information gathering, it would not be possible to achieve success in the operations of the security personnel, pointing out that traditional rulers are useful instruments in information gathering.
“The Senate recently cleared the Service Chiefs with the Chief of Defence Staff, and we took time to listen to them and we were very impressed with their resume. We believe that we have square pegs in square holes and they would do their best. But in any security situation, without intelligence and information, you can’t achieve success in any operation.
“The traditional father is a reservoir of information. Everybody runs to the traditional father. Sometimes we pretend, there is no politician that wants to be anything in this country that does not visit the traditional ruler to pay homage and pledge allegiance,” he said.
Earlier in his speech on behalf of the traditional rulers, the Etsu of Nupe, Dr Yahaya Abubakar, who represented the Chairman of the National Traditional Council of Nigeria, the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar, said that the constitutional role of traditional rulers was expunged by framers of the 1999 Constitution.
He lamented that all efforts made by traditional rulers across the country under the aegis of National Council of Traditional Rulers, to get back the role, proved abortive.
“The most recent of such efforts, was the one made during the 9th National Assembly, which didn’t scale through as a result of failure to get the required votes in the Senate for the demand despite, succeeding in the House of Representatives,” he lamented.
