The need to address the nation’s insecurity through monarchs and traditional rulers was the focal point at a summit, which featured some of the country’s brains at a national summit last week. ADEGUNLE OLUGBAMILA was there.
The Academia, last week at a summit, said traditional rulers have pivotal role to play in securing the nation. It lent its voice to the state of insecurity in the country and proffered lasting solutions to tame the monster threatening to tear the country apart and concluded that monarchs and traditional rulers also have critical role to play. The summit, courtesy of the Centre for Black Culture and International Understanding (CBCIU) in Osun State, had its theme: “National summit on security and (in) security in Nigeria: The role of traditional institutions.’
It had in attendance traditional rulers from across the country. They included the Sultan of Sokoto Sa’ad Abubakar; the Ooni of Ife, Oba Enitan Ogunwusi; the Osemawe of Ondo, Oba Victor Adesimbo Kiladejo; the former governor of Osun State, Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola and the host governor, Gboyega Oyetola and a host of other prominent personalities. There were also vigilante groups; hunters association; farmers association; market women; academia; technocrats; culture activists and traditionalists, among others. After declaring the summit open by Governor Oyetola, participants then transited into a panel discussion with the academia dissecting the security situation of the country. The panel admitted that traditional institutions should be more empowered constitutionally in order to maintain security in their respective domains, albeit through community policing.
The discourse, moderated by the Orangun of Oke-Ila Oba Adedokun Abolarin, dissected the rise of social malaise, its cause and solution. The interface also espoused various security and quasi-security bodies in Nigeria, vis-a-vis aggressive community policing as complementary strategy to curb anti-social elements.
Leading the discussion was Dr. Willie Eselebor of the Peace and Conflict Studies Department, University of Ibadan (UI), who canvassed NEEDS Analysis for the nation’s security. Needs Analysis, according to Berkely Lab Training, a training and research firm, is defined as deficiencies or problems and causes and solutions. “It can be thought of as the process of identifying gaps between what should be happening and what is happening, and accounting for the causes of these gaps. In this way, it is a systematic search for identifying deficiencies between actual and desired job performance and the factors that prevent desired job performance as presented in the following steps: describing the desired performance, determining current performance, describing performance, gaps and causes and lastly, identifying solutions.”
To Eselebor, for the Southwest security outfit codenamed: Amotekun to succeed, it must operate in sync with other similar outfits across other geo-political regions in the country. “There must also be some understanding between the Amotekun and the police. There must be dialogues and alignments. Truth is, our borders are porous yet no state government can direct police to man them because they are controlled from the central.
Amotekun must be properly harmonised and controlled especially in areas such as arms bearing arms, training, and intelligence gathering, among others. In addition, those being recruited (into Amotekun) must be made to swear to an oath to ensure they don’t abuse their powers.”
He described traditional rulers as indispensable elements that must be carried along in the nation’s quest for a thorough security. He added that, as it is the tradition, monarchs are fully on ground with retinue of aides from who they gather intelligence reports, especially when strangers invade their communities.
A senior lecturer in the Department of History and International Studies, Joseph Ayo Babalola University (JABU), Osun State, Prof .Noah Echa Attah, who is from the Northeastern part of the country, described the Northeast region as Nigeria’s ‘confluence point’, saying it houses Nigeria’s three major ethnic nationalities-Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa, who, owing to their settlement in the region over the years, are now considered ‘indigenes’.
Unfortunately, Attah said the region’s configuration appears to be its albatross as political gladiators often takes advantage of that in the event of crisis. He lamented that last year, the region paid the highest price regarding farmers-herders crisis in the country.
“Also do not forget that Benue State, for example, is being considered the food basket of the nation; but that has been impeded by the farmers-herders crisis. Last year, the Northeast has the highest number of causalities of farmers-herders conflict.
“I must also emphasise that in the pre-independence Nigeria, the Northeast has political control from outside the region. From the colonial period, it used to be ‘colonialism by proxy’, which also undermined the powers of the traditional rulers, who were at the mercy of their political gladiators.
“So, there is need for review of the Constitution to give more powers to traditional rulers to have more control, especially over ‘ungoverned places’ where rituals and shrines were once performed.”
In his submission, Dean School of Transport, Lagos State University (LASU), Prof Samuel Odewunmi, identified the ‘press, advertising and ransom’ as the tripod behind the surge in kidnappings across the country.
He lamented that the media has given so much prominence to ransom in criminal activities. Odewunmi noted that the mere mention of huge sums of money as ransom, especially in kidnapping, in a country bedeviled by poverty and joblessness, has also pushed otherwise harmless Nigerians into becoming criminals. “We need the media to help rather than complicate the rate of kidnappings in the country,” Odewunmi said.
He continued: “It is in this same country of extremely poor people that the media would announce that about N50million or N100 million were collected as ransom by kidnappers on a single operation. By repeatedly announcing huge sums on kidnapping, the media has unconsciously tempted the mind of others, who now see that there so much money to be made from kidnapping.
“We need to draw the attention of editors across media organisations that they are unconsciously monetising kidnapping and other criminal activities. They need to give less prominence to the aspect of ransom in their various reports.
“Another aspect tainting the youths towards criminality is the kleptomania tendencies of the leadership, as well as the loss of value system in the society.
“It is also a pity that unlike before, the Nigerian society today celebrates wealthy people without caring to know how such people made it. Religious organisations, schools, and different associations celebrate and even give awards to all manners of people whose source of wealth is unknown just because they can afford to give them millions.
“Our leaders too are not helping matters. They pile up our common wealth beyond what their present generation could spend. They are not stealing for need, but for greed.”
A professor of History and former Director, Centre for General Studies at the University of Ibadan, Oyo State, Prof Olutayo Adesina, challenged traditional rulers to acknowledge the fact that they need to restructure their security architecture and make it technology-driven in line with 21-Century realities.
During the colonial era, traditional rulers were granted some constitutional powers to secure their domains. Today, they may not have that constitutional power again, owing to the present political structure. Nonetheless, truth is, they were chosen by their own people; so they have that single advantage of being able to gather intelligence
Aside kidnapping, armed robbery, and ritual killings, Adesina said traditional institutions must equally spread their dragnet to internet fraudsters, who often rip innocent individuals of their hard earned money, and in the process destroy the country’s image.
While not jettisoning the traditional methodology on security, Adesina implored the traditional institutions to reconstitute their committees on intelligence in a manner that would be defined by the principle of ‘see something; say something’.
“As monarchs, how do we secure ourselves and our domains? Adesina asked.
“During the colonial era, traditional rulers were granted some constitutional powers to secure their domains. Today, they may not have that constitutional power again, owing to the present political structure. Nonetheless, truth is, they were chosen by their own people; so they have that single advantage of being able to gather intelligence information from their chiefs, servants, and other retune of aides, and without running afoul of the law.”
Like Odewunmi, Prof Adesina further craved moral revolution, saying the society has allowed the present generation to ‘run beyond the consumption of their parents, resulting in increased wave of crimes in the society’.
Throwing his weight behind community policing, Prof Tajudeen Akanji, reminded participants of the role of government, which is security. He said all over the world, the masses appraise government by its ability to guarantee lives and property of its citizenry.
As a member of the Presidential Committee on Disposal of Special Detainees linked with Boko Haram Insurgency, Akanji said many of those arrested confessed that their arrest were made possible courtesy of the Civilian JTF, who supply intelligence reports to soldiers.
Instead of rubbishing a quasi-security body like Amotekun, Akanji urged the Federal Government to embrace and harmonised it, alongside other groups with similar motives, appreciating their role, especially with respect to community policing and intelligence gathering.
“It’s a pity that the security structure in the country has no blueprint,” said Akanji, a professor of Industrial and Peace Education at the UI.
“American was once like this before until the 9/11 attack on its own soil. This made the country to bring all the security apparatuses together under one body. Amotekun or no Amotekun, this initiative will never succeed if it does not have interactions with other similar platforms across the country. Government must also be prepared to deploy more of their security votes into training of the personnel, especially in the area of Information and Communication Technology because most criminals of today are tech-savvy and therefore, very difficult to tame.”
A blogger and social commentator, Bamidele Olateju, who delivered her address both Yoruba and English languages, urged Amotekun to toe the line of traditional means of fighting crime. According to her, the Yoruba nation must banish poverty and hunger from its land via return to aggressive agricultural practice and provision of infrastructures and jobs for her teeming youths.
“We must learn to feed ourselves. When people are hungry, they jump into criminality,” she said. “We must also ensure that we provide enough security for our farmers and farmlands. Unlike our time, we no longer plant food crops, we now bring most of our crops from other parts of the country. This trend must be reversed.
“We must also bring back the culture of affordable loan facilities during which was the norm during Chief (Obafemi) Awolowo (the first premier of the Southwest era), as against the kind of loans facilities, which some microfinance banks now provide, but at cut-throat interest rate. We must also encourage our teeming youths to work, in addition to promoting our indigenous languages and other beautiful aspect of our culture,” she said.
To the Director-General, Development Agenda for Western Nigeria (DAWN) Commission, Mr. Seye Oyeleye the quality of life is central to economic development.
He lamented that the aforementioned qualities could no longer be assured in Nigeria, a development, which he said, now scares potential investors away.
According to him, this development birthed the Amotekun initiative to protect lives and properties, but not to secede as its being rumored in certain quarters. “We (Yoruba) are not breaking away; we are not after any ethic nationality. What we are focusing on is the security of lives and properties. A kidnapper will not kidnap you because you are Muslim or Christian, Igbo, Hausa or Yoruba,” Oyeleye said.
“What we are saying is that this is the region that provides 45 per cent of Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). We must admit we already have security issues; but if we don’t want it to worsen, we need to secure ourselves. Amotekun is purely community policing set up for the protection of lives and properties. Amotekun is not for the Yoruba because it is not only the Yoruba that live in Southwestern Nigeria.”
Earlier, CBCIU Executive Director, Prof Siyan Oyeweso, said the summit was meant to invite traditional rulers nationwide to deliberate on issues of insecurity.
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