LAST week, a query addressed to a foremost traditional ruler in Kogi State, the Ohinoyi of Ebiraland, Alhaji Ado Ibrahim, by the Kogi State government asking him to explain his absence at a public function involving President Muhammadu Buhari surfaced in the media. The letter dated January 5, 2023 and written by the Director, Chieftaincy Affairs, Enimola Eniola, on behalf of the Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, Abdulsalam Deedat, panned the 94-year-old king for “actions quite unbecoming of a revered Royal Father,” namely his absence at the “glorious visit of Mr. President and Commander-in-Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces, His Excellency, President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR, to Okene on 29th December, 2022 to commission landmark projects executed by our dear Governor, His Excellency, Alhaji Yayaha Bello.” The letter accused the Ohinoyi of “choosing to disdain the office of the Executive Governor…with effrontery before the number one citizen of Nigeria.” Accusing the Ohinoyi of insubordination and disloyalty to the president and the governor, the government said the Ohinoyi had laid “bad precedence (sic) to traditional institutions in the state,” being of “grave danger to the security of the state.”
In reply, the traditional ruler said he received no official letter informing him of President Buhari’s visit to the state, alleging that the governor, whom he had not seen for some time, appointed someone he (Ohinoyi) did not know to read on his behalf a welcome speech that was not sanctioned by him during the visit. Describing the allegation that he deliberately refused to welcome President Buhari during the said visit as “unfair to his ripe age and experience,” the Ohinoyi blamed his absence at the ceremony on the lack of proper briefing by the government, even as he pointed out that a bomb blast had claimed the lives of three persons near his palace on the morning of that day. Recalling that the incident “led to the loss of lives of innocent Ebira people, massive damage on my palace and rancour within my domain,” the Ohinoyi added that at about 8:15am on December 29, 2022, he received an unofficial copy of the programme of the president which showed that he (the president) was meant to inaugurate the Ohinoyi’s palace at 10:10am. This observation, he said, “implied that Mr. President was to inaugurate another palace other than my current palace that I have been occupying since I was crowned.”
If the Kogi letter illustrates anything, it is the fact that there must have been some disagreements between the state government and the traditional ruler prior to it. Even at that, we find the letter quite condescending and provocative. Purportedly written to elicit a defence, it stated that “oral explanations may be required from you when a panel is set up to study your case,” showing that the government had made up its mind that the Ohinoyi was never going to give a satisfactory explanation for his absence at the event under reference. It is no wonder then that the state government rejected the said reply, declaring in a letter by the Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs that the response was conveyed with a title “alien to recognised law.”
To be sure, we take due cognisance of the place of protocol and respect in government business. This obtains everywhere in the world as a sign and recognition of hierarchy and due processes. In the instant case, there should have been agreement between the government and the Ohinoyi on the modalities and the nature of arrangements for the president’s reception, especially as he was visiting the domain of the Ohinoyi. It is also our position, however, that the practice of protocol in Nigeria has become so obsequious as to turn the ordinarily neutral requirements of courtesy into fawning adulation, if not worship, of officers and officialdom. For instance, the optics of having virtually all officers of the government at every official event to welcome the president and governors is a deeply disturbing one. It is in this respect that we believe that while the Kogi State government could indeed have reservations about the Ohinoyi not joining the welcome train for the president, this is an issue that ought to have been taken up by the governor personally in consonance with the revered traditional placement of the Ohinoyi and not through the channel of an official letter of query signed by a Director in the State’s Ministry of Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs.
To say the very least, the handling of the disagreement between the state government and the Ohinoyi has been less than noble, and we urge the government to swiftly withdraw the said letter, while the governor should thereafter get in touch with him to resolve the issue. Regardless of the challenges with which Nigeria continues to grapple, traditional institutions are still maintained as the epitome of the history and culture of the people and nothing should be done to bring the institution to public ridicule by the government overtly or covertly. We therefore solicit a more nuanced process to the resolution of the disagreement without prejudice to what must have been responsible for it in the first place. While we advise traditional rulers as custodians of culture to maintain a decent relationship with politicians and officialdom in general, we urge that nothing be done to vitiate age-old traditions represented by revered traditional institutions such as the Ohinoyi. If the government approaches its relationship with the stool with decency, and vice versa, it is for the ultimate benefit of the Nigerian society.
