When I read last week’s column of my colleague and friend, Dr Eugene Enahoro, I found it difficult to believe most of what my eyes and mind transmitted to my head. Yet, I had to believe them because they were my own eyes and brain. Titled, “Don’t rope in traditional rulers” and published in the Daily Trust newspaper of Tuesday January 21, 2025, the piece became the first major issue on which I have to disagree with Dr Eugene on nearly everything he opined on the traditional institution.

For the years we served together (I’m still serving) on the editorial board of the Daily Trust newspaper, I knew him to be a man of fair-minded assessment and honest judgement. I would ordinarily have ignored the piece if it were on partisan politics, philosophy, or socio-economic matters. I was compelled to make an issue out of it because I found the piece essentially misleading. Again, because of the fear of being misunderstood in the exercise of my right of reply, I had to change the title of my response several times before I finally settled on the above. I’ve also made up my mind that I would conclude my response in one piece, without serialising it.

The first contention that unsettled me is Eugene’s flabbergasting assertion that “It is fallacious to argue that traditional rulers play useful roles in mediating between the people and the state, enhancing national identity, resolving minor conflicts and providing an institutional safety valve for inadequate state bureaucracies, indeed, the truth is the opposite. The current scant regard for traditional institutions stems from the manner in which they have become subservient to elected political paymasters.” I wondered at what could have prompted Dr Eugene to make a sweeping yet turbulent statement such as this. I felt this particular claim, which is no less incorrect as it is, was coming from the wrong person.

It is public knowledge that the royal palaces, castles and fortresses of Emirs, Obas, and Chiefs, have always been the first port of call for state governors and local government (LG) chairmen in Nigeria once a crisis erupts in their administrative or political domains. They rush to royal fathers for the sake of the huge influence traditional rulers have over their people. The chain of command within the traditional institution as obtains, for example, in the northern part of Nigeria goes down in awe and in the strictest sense once ordered by the Emir through the district head and ward head to the village head. This is even as the traditional rulers are neither in charge of the police, army, the civil service, custodial centers or even courts of law. If not for the huge community service offered (for free) by the royal fathers, do you think governors will ever think of running to our royal fathers, especially given the enormous powers at the formers’ disposal including some sort of control over the commissioner of police in the state?

Since Dr Eugene doubts the usefulness of our royal fathers in “resolving minor conflicts and providing an institutional safety valve for inadequate state bureaucracies,” it would be relevant to recall what my senior colleague, Malam Mahmud Jega, once told me about an incident that occurred over three decades ago, specifically in Edo State where Dr Eugene comes from. In the run-up to the 1991 elections (during the transition to civil rule) which held under former President Ibrahim Babangida, the Isekhure (Chief Priest) of Benin, Nosakhure Isekhure, announced that Oba Erediauwa (the then Oba of Benin) had placed a curse on any son/daughter of Benin soil that voted for the governorship candidate of the National Republican Convention (NRC), Chief Lucky Igbinedion. The Chief Priest said Lucky’s father, the Esama of Benin Kingdom, Chief Gabriel Igbinedion, was “an enemy of the Oba of Benin.” Lucky was believed to have lost that election because of that “curse”.

Were it not for our traditional rulers who are always resident in their respective domains, some communities in Nigeria would have since been wiped out by disasters or conflicts because the LG chairmen that have the constitutional mandate to avert or manage such emergencies rarely live in their LGAs. It has since become a norm for LG Chairmen to abandon their official duty-post for the state capital or Abuja. Rain or shine, our royal fathers are around. Whether it is communal clash, boundary dispute, farmers/herders’ conflict, or youths rampage over poor electricity supply, our royal fathers are the first to step in and restore calm.

If traditional rulers constituted any threats to the sovereignty, peace, unity, national cohesion and wellbeing of citizens, why are they always invited to serve as ‘Royal Father(s) of the Day’ at every official event that would be attended by their excellences; governors and the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria? If anyone thinks that traditional rulers do not play strategic roles in governance, let him attempt at mobilizing the grassroots communities for any national initiative and see if local communities will easily buy into it. The success story of the polio vaccine in Nigeria would be incomplete without mentioning the strategic role played by the Sultan of Sokoto and indeed other royal fathers in the Northern states of Nigeria.

It was not out of whimsical thoughts that the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) and the National Council of Traditional Rulers (NCTRN) in Abuja, sometime last year, agreed that the latter should be assigned constitutional roles. As far back as the early 20th Century, even the British colonial masters appreciated the administrative worth of our traditional rulers through the indirect rule structure of governance deployed by the imperialists. Is it now that we are under self-rule that our royal fathers would have no value to add to governance?

I’m still left wondering whether some of the claims in the piece under reference is Dr Eugene’s perception of a particular traditional ruler in the country or a reflection of the entire traditional institution in Nigeria. The insinuation that assigning constitutional roles to traditional rulers would “… multiply the calls for secession from Nigeria” sounds too weighty if not insulting to many of the highly respected traditional rulers in Nigeria whose individual leadership roles contribute to the orchestration of peaceful co-existence in the country.

I believe traditional rulers play strategic roles in nearly every aspect of life including governance. They have been as much as they are still relevant. We need them. May Allah guide our lawmakers to conclude outstanding legislative actions on the bill that passed second reading in December 2024, Amin.