Insecurity: I support that responsible citizens should bear arms

The Obaleo of Erinmope-Ekiti in Moba Local Government Area of Ekiti State, Oba (Dr) Sunday Aikuirawo Aniyi, was the Principal Private Secretary to Governor Kayode Fayemi before his coronation in December 2021. The monarch who recently celebrated his first anniversary on the throne speaks with ‘YOMI AYELESO on his experience on the throne and other issues. Excerpts:

You were reluctant and hesitant but later accepted to be the Obaleo of Erinmope-Ekiti. What convinced you about the throne?

I will say absolutely nothing convinced me. Even before it happened, our departed king was of age and was inactive for years. You know when people grow old, you will not pronounce them dead but people will know that one day, he will go to the great beyond. So when that happens, what happens next especially when he is someone holding an important position? At some point, my friends will be saying I might be called upon to be the next king of the community, and when I became conscious, I was scared. I deliberately did not show up in the town. I operated from behind the scenes. I would donate money but you will not see me in any activity so that I will not be seen as a potential king. Everything about my career was hidden from many people in the community. It is something I didn’t want but when it happened, people in the community were calling but I told them I wasn’t interested in going into the crude process of kingship selection because I have not done anything diabolical in my life and I was not ready to start consulting herbalists for protection. I told them I was comfortable with my simple life and that I was already in government serving the state.

However, in 2013 my father who was with me in Akure for some time, called me to his room one day and said if I was invited to the throne of Obaleo, I should not reject it. He was 95. He said: “You will recall that the next king will come from our quarters. If you are invited to be king, you should never reject it.” I asked ‘do they beg people to come and become king in this age?’ I said I would never contest to be Obaleo, that I don’t like a situation where I will have to contest against my fellow family or community member. That is why I said I will not contest for elective position. My father said when the time comes, they would call on me and I promised him that if they call on me and I have a conviction from God that it is destined for me, I will take it. The pressure came from different places in the community, maybe because of the fact that our quarters has been out of the throne for more than 350 years. We have three ruling houses in Erinmope-Ekiti which are actually quarters: the Iloye, Iworo-Aro and the Ijewu ruling houses. So, it struck me that what my father told me in 2013 that it is becoming a reality. That was how the whole process began and I emerged the king out of the six contestants for the throne after fulfilling all the requirements.

Considering your background in academics and in government, what is the experience like compared to the throne?

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It has been a mixed experience. In the past 25/30 years, I don’t think I had slept in my community for three days on a stretch but now I have to be there permanently, that is the first shift. I relocated my family to Ekiti from Akure where I had been for 20 years. I moved them in 2020 and in 2021, the kingship happened. I am conversant with the traditional institution in my community. I had the privilege of learning the history from the elderly people. However, one of the things I found strange is that people for whom I prostrated a few months earlier are now prostrating for me. There’s also the lack of freedom, you can’t go where you like.

What are your plans for the community?

We have good roads to Erinmope-Ekiti, we have running water and we have electricity almost 20 hours a day. We have primary schools and basic health centres. All the social amenities necessary for development are there but people remain poor because there are no investments to absorb the people into an economic functionality. So, what is lacking is private investment and some of our people don’t have the confidence to invest in our areas thinking there is nothing here or we don’t have the population. The campaign I am leading with my people is that, if I can have investment of N200 million in Erinmope-Ekiti today, the economic activities will be different. The major task I have is how to mobilise those who have the resources to muster enough confidence to invest in our community and absorb our young people. This is because we have suffered the worst of rural – urban migration in Erinmope. More than 80 percent of our people live outside the community but during Christmas, I don’t know of any town that can be as bubbly as Erinmope in Ekiti State. Agriculture is primary but beyond that, education is another area of priority. One of the mistakes we imbibed while in secondary school is that businesses and industries are located by nearness to market. That mindset affected how our people see market. They see market as a large population concentration; so everybody runs to Lagos. What is the population of Lagos? Lagos claims 20 million and by documentation we may think Lagos is about 12 million. Nigeria is said to be about 200 million in population, it means that Lagos State is not even 10 per cent of Nigeria, yet all these companies which invest in Lagos invest under a high cost; they will still take the goods to meet the remaining 80 percent of the market. Who says you can’t produce Japanese cars in Erinmope and sell in America? The concept of nearness to market has affected our traditional understanding that investors are looking for where the elites are concentrated but if you go to other climes, you will see that some states that have low population and cost of living are the places industries target, especially those not in the production of goods and services needed my majority of people. By God’s grace, our hope is that in the next one year, we would have mobilised people to invest in agriculture, education and other areas of life. We are targeting tourism too, because we have a golf course in our community, the only other one in Ekiti after the one in Ado. Our hope is to create activities around it to attract more golfers of repute to come and play in Erinmope. We will also create larger recreational activities around it so that people can come around for weekend and holidays because we have a peaceful environment, beautiful landscape and the rest.

Looking at the traditional institution in the country, what roles do you think traditional rulers should be playing in development and in resolving challenges in the society?

The Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi, said recently that the traditional intuition is one of the most resourceful institutions in Nigeria. That is a place you have successful men across different fields on the throne, no matter the size of the community. People look at the best among the available resources. No community puts people into kingship just because they are human beings, there is always something they bring to the table. It is a domain of knowledge. Therefore, the institution is an institution of knowledge, experience and character still matters. Misbehaviour is not common there. Government and stakeholders cannot afford to leave that kind of institution under-utilised. People still respect the opinion of traditional rulers, which is why people tend to agree and listen to their judgment even more than the court. We can be used for arbitration but our arbitration could be more formal, especially when you want to summon people. There should be constitutional roles but not the way people see it because I think the dignity of the traditional institution is in the fact that we are not overtly exposed to so much political activities. That is why the institution has not been entirely bastardised.

For instance, there is no reason we should practice the current local government system we practice. The current system we have is waste of resources because we have natural local government administration system that is in our cultural DNA, and it is easy for our people to accept it. For instance, we have Moba Traditional Council. We are 13 traditional rulers as members and we represent our communities. We know the problems, we don’t need you to campaign to us. Why not allow us in the local government administration and just have community associations with one member each to be in the executive arm where the traditional rulers themselves will be legislature? You can shield them a bit from awarding contracts and the rest. Why do you need all these directors who sit doing nothing? The over formalisation of the local government kills it; you don’t need chairmen, you don’t need councillors that do nothing.

Of course, traditional rulers also have diverse experience, using them in community government and in security. We are practically the ones doing security now. In fact, President Buhari had said several times that we should go back to traditional system. He said he continues to find it funny and strange why criminals will take over a whole community and the traditional rulers there will just be looking but the President forgot that the power of the traditional rulers have been reduced to mere ceremonial head. So, if they want us to do more, we can do more. As of now, even in Moba, we are mobilising security fund so that we can pay our hunters who are very dedicated. These people don’t have salary but if we call on them in times of danger, they hurry there whereas the police that have guns will tell you they don’t have the means, they will give you more than a thousand reasons why they can’t pursue criminals. They will tell you that they need clearance from their headquarters in Ado-Ekiti. The crisis of security in Nigeria is a kind of informal problem, we are not dealing with the urban crimes which the police was trained for, they were not trained to go and fight in the forest. Many of our rural communities don’t have police presence, it took my effort when I was still in government before they could restore police station in Erinmope-Ekiti. The police is now the last line of defence, people don’t care about them and the soldiers are just symbols of national existence because I don’t know anywhere in the world where soldiers will be manning check points like we have it now in Ekiti and other places. You keep soldiers permanently in a place and crime is being committed about ten meters away and they will say nobody alerted them. This system we have now is a mess, it is a joke and everyone is overwhelmed.

I can tell you that at the community level we are doing our best but we lack resources. If state government can give us N20,000 monthly for 50 people we can call at any point in Moba, we will hardly hear of any security breach. People know the tracks and the grassroots, and I am an advocate of citizens’ self-defence because there is no reason criminals will have access to gun of any grade and then responsible citizens will be helpless. If government cannot end the kind of banditry we have, where they can invade a whole town, kidnap 300 people and make them walk hundreds of kilometers and government will be helpless, they should allow the rural people to have access to guns even if it is pump action. If 10/15 criminals are coming to a community of 1,000 dwellers and they know that people could have guns, they are likely to think twice. If you know that everyman driving on the highway is likely to have a gun, you are not likely to have highway robbers. The reason criminality is rising is because of uneven access to weapons, it is not because people are lazy. Government can license responsible citizens to carry guns and leaders in communities can sign indemnity forms that the guns will not be in wrong hands. It is easy but we make this complicated because some people benefit from the crimes and from the chaos in the country.

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