Traditional rulers need constitutional backing to tackle insecurity – AIG Albasu

As a delegate from the North and a retired security personnel, what is your assessment of the security challenges in the country and what should the conference do?I have said it, during the presidential address, as you are aware we were all given time for our contributions, three, three minutes. In those three minutes, I […]

As a delegate from the North and a retired security personnel, what is your assessment of the security challenges in the country and what should the conference do?
I have said it, during the presidential address, as you are aware we were all given time for our contributions, three, three minutes. In those three minutes, I analysed to the best of my ability the precarious security situation in Nigeria.
First of all, in the North-East zone, three states in that zone are under emergency rule for the past one year, and even the other states that are not under the emergency rule there are killings and burning of schools and other things.
The North-West is plagued with the issue of cattle rustling or the fulani-farmers crisis. In the North-Central, which is also affected by cattle rustling and the fulani/farmers crises, and also if you go to the South, they have their own problem. They are still having the problem of oil bunkering and oil spills.
If you go to the South-East, the people are still suffering from the issue of kidnapping and ritual killings and the South-West also has kidnapping and ritual killings.
So, the entire country seems to be under siege as at present, and this really demand us to beef up all our security agencies, the military, the police, the civil defence, the secret service or what you call the DSS. They should be properly equipped so that we will be able to face this serious challenge before us.
In particular, we have to improve our intelligence network. To me, there is a lot of failure on the part of intelligence.
If you look at the North-East, what is happening for the past two weeks now 190 girls have been missing from a secondary school and up to now we have not heard any concrete intelligence say this is where they are, all we have been hearing are rumours that, they are here, they are there.
Now, if you look at what has been happening for the past one, two years when the Boko Haram became properly and militarily escalated up to now we have not known the source of their arms, where was the source of their money and their vehicles. So we need beef up our security operators and beef up our intelligence operators and probably get the intelligence operators to be up and doing, so that we can go to where to get the decision.
But the president didn’t mention this issue of insecurity during his inaugural address at the conference…
I said so, I said so. The president should have mentioned the issue of insecurity, because his first job as the president of Nigeria is to provide security to the nation. We elected him to secure us, it is after we are secured that we can talk of education, we can talk of health, we can talk of oil and everything.
But, the first and the foremost under the constitution, the president is elected to provide security to us, so we expected him to dwell a lot during his opening speech on the security situation in the nation which he has not, I think that is a big omission.
What are the issues you think should pre occupy the minds of northern delegates at this conference?
Well, I think as it was discovered during the presidential address, the first issue that is to occupy the minds of all the northern delegates is the security. If you analyse what is happening in the North, people are in a terrible situation.
Other issues for example, the issue of education appears to be at its worst. We need the federal government to declare a state of emergency as regards education. We are not looking for a state of emergency regarding security as such, but a state of emergency regarding education, so that our educational level can be propped up and improved.
Then, I think there is also the issue of the onshore-offshore oil dichotomy. This area need to be visited properly, and there is the issue of resource control which also need to be revisited.
All these areas, the North is being short changed very seriously and we need people to talk really on these, so that we can arrive at a good understanding for peace and progress to be seen in the country.
We have the devolution of power, some people are agitating for the states to be abolished and then regions to replace the states, they are agitating for six regions according to the political zones. I think that will be improper for us in the North. For several reasons one of which is that, in the North, we can hardly get six states or seven states that are having the same culture and everything.
The South west will have no problem, they are all Yorubas, and therefore it will be very easy for them to operate because they have the same background. But in the North we are having different cultural background and we will not support the issue of regional government.
What about those advocating for the scrap of local governments?
What are their reasons for the scrapping of the local governments? Up to now I have not read any tangible reason for the local governments to be scrapped. Local government is the first tier that is really looking after the people down the ladder. I am a district head in a place called Albasu and in my district the only sign of government that we mostly see is the local government.
It is the local government that is constructing roads, it is the local government that is constructing schools. They are the people we see in office. If you now scrap the local government who do we see? The state government is too high, so the ordinary man will be left hanging. He has nowhere to put his complaints, so I will not support the scrapping of local government and I don’t think any state in the North will support the scrapping of local government.
But many Nigerians believe that the president convoked this conference not for most of the reasons you mentioned. It’s said that tenure elongation, particularly as the Norh came to the conference as minority, is the reason for the conference. So, you are here simply to rubber stamp the president’s agenda?
I wouldn’t say yes or no, whether the person who convoked the conference has his own agenda, because we have not seen any agenda to believe that he has his own agenda.
If it is there, may be it will manifest later but for this one month we have not seen any agenda. I don’t believe that he has his own agenda for the conference. The issue of the division that, the southern states are having more people than the northern states, the president once said when he was confronted that, that was not intentional.
We hope it was not intentional, and since the leadership of the North has not spoken on it, we will accept it as it is. We will do our best to see that we are not shortchanged. We are happy to say that the first thing the president said in his speech was that, there should be a consensus and where there is no consensus there should be a minimum of 70 percent. That will probably give us an opportunity to counter balance what is being arrived at.
But all your recommendations are subject to President Jonathan’s discretion. Do you feel that  your recommendations will be at his discretion to select the best or even not implement any aspect of it?
Well , whether we like it or not,  we are not elected and we have no provision under the constitution. If we wanted that arrangement there should have been an election to elect us as representatives of the people to come and discuss our problems, but we were not elected, and therefore since we were not elected then it means that whatever we do is advisory to the president and we cannot decide what he takes or what he does not take.
We only pray and hope that the good and reasonable recommendations will be accepted both by the president and the National Assembly.
Do you see the need for referendum?
Well, I am not sure if at the moment the constitution has made a provision for a referendum, but if the National Assembly amends the constitution to make the provision for a referendum, well areas that require constitutional changes, I wouldn’t mind if they go for referendum. But there are many areas that don’t require constitutional changes. Some them require executive actions, some of them require  ordinary laws which means they may not necessary go for referendum.
As a retired security officer and as a now a traditional ruler, do you need a constitutional role as a traditional ruler?
Certainly, yes if you ask  any traditional ruler he will tell you that we need even if it is one paragraph  or one sentence to show that we are under the constitution. This is because we have multifarious set of jobs. In my local government, I act as a judge, sometimes I act as a health officer, sometimes I act as a mediator and a reconciliatory, all these works I am doing are not backed by a proper law. If we are under the constitution then, the state government will use that constitution and promulgate laws that will give us some necessary powers to help in what we are doing, particularly on the issue of security, a lot of the security work that is being done in the villages, I am sure you know it is being done by the traditional rulers, but we have no backing that recognises us, respects us. So there is need for some legal backing that will protect us and encourage us to do more.