Constitution amendment: ‘Give traditional rulers roles in security, agriculture’

Ahead of the proposed constitutional amendment, the presidential candidate of African Renaissance Party (ARP) in the 2019 elections, Alhaji Yahaya Ndu, has urged the National Assembly to give specific and important roles to traditional rulers across the country in security and agriculture.

According to him, it is unacceptable that the traditional institutions that held the FCT and other parts of the country have been relegated to the background. He said if the traditional rulers can hold the peace in FCT before it became the federal capital of the country, they could as well be called upon now to help resolve the present challenges.

He told reporters, yesterday, in Abuja that if the traditional rulers were directly involved in the scheme of things in the country, the spate of insecurity would not have reached its present level, adding that it would have been resolved.

Ndu, who spoke as the President of the Peoples Movement for a New Nigeria (PMNN), said the confusion, despair, desperation and other challenges in the land could be surmounted quickly if traditional rulers are not relegated to the background and urged that they should immediately be engaged by government at all levels.

“Insecurity, unemployment, immorality, corruption, violence, and disrespect for constituted authorities are prevalent with people from all works of life advancing all manner of prognosis.

“Some are even so disillusioned as to be calling for a re-colonisation or total dismemberment of the nation.

“What is to be done? Before colonisation, the areas that make up Nigeria were largely governed and administered by kings, obas, emirs and queens among others. So, governance structures were rooted in the traditional institutions.

“When the white man and his colonization came, traditional authorities were gradually uprooted and increasingly made irrelevant and redundant and even cosmetic to the extent that today there are no specific roles for traditional rulers in the extant 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria,” Ndu said.

He noted that in the 36 states of Nigeria, and in the FCT, traditional rulers are now appointed and hold office at the pleasure of the state governors and can be dethroned or suspended as the governors deemed fit.

He also called for their salaries to be paid from the consolidated revenue and their appointments and removal to be from their constituencies.