Traditional rulers must be fully involve in the system of governance -

Traditional rulers must be fully involve in the system of governance – Mafindi

A public Analyst, Alhaji Hussaini Umar Mafindi has stressed the need for Traditional Rulers to be fully involved into the system of governance in the country.

Mafindi, who was a retired Director of the National Population Commission in Taraba State made the assertion in an interview with journalists in his residence jalingo on assessment of Nigeria at 61 in terms of unity and security.

He disclosed that traditional rulers must be fully involved in the system of governance in the country because they were active during the precolonial era, and through colonialism.

Alhaji Mafindi reviewed before colonialism that “colonial masters used traditional rulers to achieve a lot and there was no disunity, all the tribes knew one another until the 1966 coup which was viewed as a tribal coup and that was the genesis of our disunity in Nigeria.” He revealed.

He said Since then Nigeria has been battling with unity and many issues came in to fore, religion came in, ethnicity, and geographical area of settlement which have influenced and affected the mentality and attitude of both people within the civil service and those outside the civil service.

According to him, apparently there was synergy and cooperation between the traditional rulers and the community and there was also respect for the rule of law.

“If you are saying that you want to avoid the people who have good history of the country, who have been brought up under history and they know the law of the land since from inception even before the arrival of the colonialists and you want to avoid them completely, you can’t achieve anything”. He warned.

On addressing the issue of open grazing in Nigeria, Alh. Hussaini Umar Mafindi was on the view that the government should not concentrate on the power supply and Agricultural sectors alone as the livestock sector is very vital and the agricultural sector enjoys more support with a lot of money going into food production than livestock.

“If these people notice that they have been ignored and marginalized and later their livestock have been threatened by bandits, they will be very good instruments of recruitment into banditry, so government should also concentrate on the problems of the livestock sector so that the sector can also boom like the Agricultural sector.” He emphasized.

Alternatively, he scrutinized the ranching system, saying that “if you provide a ranch, you must also provide fees for the total number of cattle you are rearing to remain in one place, you must also provide adequate medication, water facilities, security for the people living in that environment, you must provide education for them to keep them in one place when all these things are not in place, the ranching system will collapse.

“There should be an established leadership between the farmers and cattlemen and the leadership should be held responsible for whatever happens.

“In curbing insecurity in the country, he said one must first look into the genesis of the crisis, which is the issue of deprivation, marginalization, discrimination and this is the prompt of poverty and joblessness in the society.” The public analyst reminded the FG.