Alhaji (Dr) (Brig. Gen) Yahaya Abubakar (rtd) (CFR) is the Etsu Nupe (King of Nupe), the ruler of all Nupe speaking people.
He hails from one of the ruling houses of the Bida Emirate (Usman Zaki). He attended Government College, Sokoto and later Commercial College, Kano from 1967 to 1971, then enrolled in the Nigerian Defence Academy, Kaduna where he studied from 1973 to 1975 to join the Nigerian Army. His last military posting was at the Defence Headquarters Abuja, where he was director of foreign operations, before retiring as a Brigadier General in September 2003. By virtue of his title, he is the chairman of the Niger State Council of Traditional Rulers. Alhaji Abubakar who marked his 17th year on the throne on Friday in this interview speaks on his experiences and challenges. Excerpts:
You have been on the throne as the Etsu Nupe for 17 years, what has been your experience?
I thank the Almighty Allah immensely for life and time and the opportunity to ascend the throne of my forefathers who actually came to Nupe land many years ago and established this dynasty and along that line, I came on the throne on the 11th of September 2003, having served in the military for a period of 30 years. So, I put off the uniforms and then put on the agbada and turban. We have two dynasties in Nupe land, we have the original Nupe dynasty and then we had a change of power and administration after wars and counter wars and the dynasty changed from the original Nupe to the Nupe-Fulani dynasty. It has been very challenging but we thank the Almighty Allah for his blessings. The opportunity and privileges we got when we were in the military actually gave us quick adaptation into the new field we found ourselves. I served in the military for 30 years and three months before the demise of my uncle who was the 12th Etsu Nupe and Emir of Bida. On the 11th of September, I was called in by the state government and was handed the letter of appointment as the 13th Etsu Nupe and chairman, Niger State Council of Traditional Rulers. Realizing and knowing that the position of leadership viz-aviz the expectations from a leader in any sphere of human endeavor, a leader is supposed to lead his people in terms of their welfare, in terms of their security, in terms of their challenges and serve as a sort of medium of understanding among them. And knowing what we have been experiencing, the knowledge and privilege one got within our area, we discovered that some aspects of human endeavor were quite lacking or reduced to the barest minimum and as such, there are challenges and difficulties. I am talking particularly about the normal activities of people, their survival. You know, every human being struggles to survive, families struggle to survive, communities struggle to survive because people must be productive and have the zeal to do something before money can come to their pockets. Food cannot come into your mouth without you working for it. Even health cannot come to your body without caring for it. You have to care for your health before you can be healthy. In our area predominantly, we are agriculturists, we farm a lot. And then, just all of a sudden, because of oil boom, agriculture was abandoned. You remember, there was a time Nigeria was exposed to oil and so many things changed economically. People abandoned their trades and took up other things. We must get our agricultural base back. We must go back to farm. If you remember also, we have had a lot of agricultural programmes in this country. We had the Green Revolution, we had Operation Feed the Nation, all these programmes were geared towards enhancing the productivity of people in the agricultural sector. But because of the factor of oil boom, so many people didn’t take agriculture seriously as it should be. The end result is that that particular aspect of our lives came down. When I ascended the throne, I felt that agriculture was very good and we made it our priority to get the people back to land. How do we did it, we said okay, anything you would want people to do, you have to first of all do it by yourself to serve as example. God so kind, my father was a farmer, and he introduced me to farming. So naturally, I got attracted to farming. So, I got the golden opportunity to show my skills which I got from my father, to let my people also use it to get the better part of life. I engaged personally in farming activities. I opened farms left, right and centre and when people see me going to farm, they would be encouraged to follow. I see that as a great achievement on my part.
What would you say is your greatest challenge on the throne so far?
Actually, I will look at it from the personal point of view and the societal point of view. From the personal point of view, having worked in the Army for 30 years whereby you give people orders to do things and they do it, following orders, here, it is a different thing. You have to persuade people. People will come before you with issues, challenges which you would expect that they should know and should have done the right thing but they would not do it and claim they don’t know. But when you start talking, they would show element of knowledge, that they actually know but why didn’t they do it before? Now, in such situation, you need to persuade them. You don’t shout on them, you don’t use force, just talk to them, you go into their minds and bring out what they are thinking and you have to come to their own level. That is a personal challenge. Then the aspect of the society is the attitude of people. You would want them to go this way and they would be going the other way. And it is not restricted to my area, it is general. Somebody knows he is a driver entrusted with a vehicle to drive and he is not taking care of that vehicle. He drives recklessly and if it spoils, he abandons it. Or you are a mechanic, you are given a vehicle to repair, you put something that would only last for a short time and then you collect much money. And after awhile, the vehicle breaks down again. That to me is an issue of attitude. The society is morally down. How do we handle that? If you remember, if you compare the administrative mechanism in this country including the military regimes, if you remember the period President Buhari ruled this country as a military Head of State, there was total discipline and the attitude to work was very high. The sense of responsibility was very high because of the push of leadership. But thereafter, things started going down. If you come to our own community, indiscipline has become a very major challenge. People have become very indisciplined, things are going haywire. Even the schools that are supposed to mould children, sometimes you will go and you don’t find teachers from morning to about noon and then the teachers would suddenly appear and shortly after, the children would be dismissed. The standard of education keeps going down. If you go to the hospitals, hardly will you see a doctor to treat you. People would go to their homes to pray to Almighty God to heal them. If they happen to go to private hospitals, they pay more. And then, all these things are as a result of attitude that has gone bad and then making our society to go down. It is very painful to us and as a community leader, I feel very bad. What do we do? The only comfort we have is to continue praying but as you are praying, you need to do so in two ways; pray to Almighty Allah to guide so that the challenges can be surmounted; also pray that your challenges be reduced so that you can handle them. Pray to Almighty Allah to guide you through your life. Whatever challenge you have, life must continue. Ask Him to give you knowledge and attitude of mind on how to pilot the affairs before you and handle your challenges.
Youth restiveness and insecurity are issues giving our leaders at the grassroots serious challenges, how do you think traditional rulers can help the government address them?
Anytime I think about these challenges, especially restiveness among our youths, sometimes, I reach a point whereby I have to take sleeping tablets so that I sleep, why? Because I discovered that what we are seeing now is worrisome. The pattern we have known before has disappeared. The authorities before had not prepared for the future. What we are seeing are parts of the failures of many years ago. Why I talk about pattern is that in those days when we were in primary school, and even up to secondary school, there used to be what we called search for young talented students. Before somebody graduated from school, you could see groups of talented children having the opportunity of meeting with bankers who came around to sponsor their education and employ them after graduation. Suddenly, this thing disappeared and gradually the population continued to increase. There is no plan for this increasing population, there is no plan that says in 10 years’ time, our population will be so and so; youths will be so and so. Since there is no such plan, the number of unemployed youths keeps accumulating. When you finish secondary school, they say university and how many people can get the opportunity to get to university? Very few and the population continues to increase. Then the idea of establishment of polytechnics came so that those who cannot go to universities can go there. This served a little purpose but after sometime, the population continued to grow. The number now is so huge that the authorities are now afraid. People finish secondary education, they have no money to further, no admission for those that want to go to university as the universities are saturated. Those that managed to finish their universities, there are no jobs after five years, 10 years and even the technical schools now, the motive behind it is to make people have hand work so they don’t depend on white collar jobs again. It should be such that if you finish as a mechanical engineer, you go and establish your own business with government supporting you. If you are supported to establish, you can employ others and the markets will be opened to you. The function of government is to harness the resources for the benefit of the people. But what do we have today? All we see are interventions and how far can that go? Interventions are for emergencies, so after that emergency, what next? A society must have to be planned. You can see how the COVID-19 took us by surprise over night. Even to feed people became a problem. Americans and British people were taking food to people’s homes during the COVID-19 lockdown because they are well planned. They had already registered their people and planned for them. They have their statistics, we don’t have statistics. When you see population of people at the market we will say we are plenty, when they are doing conventions and campaigns, they will say we are plenty but plenty in what category? All these require adequate planning which we don’t do. That’s why we in the traditional institution find it very difficult because, what we were used to before, we are not doing it anymore. We are doing our best locally in solving some of these challenges. As human beings, when we share problems with one another, it makes it easier to find solutions.
Don’t you think it would be good for the traditional rulers to have constitutional backing so that you play a more significant part in governance?
That is what we have been agitating for in our council. You know, we decided to establish a non-governmental organisaton known as National Council of Traditional Rulers of Nigeria and it is aimed at establishing relationship between us, our people and the government; because we discovered that certain policies not akin to our culture and tradition were done haphazardly and are stopped half way. Take for instance, unity schools; there was an idea for establishing unity schools in the country. That idea was based on purely unifying the entity called Nigeria, where you can have an Igbo child schooling in Sokoto; you have a Sokoto child going to Igbo land to school so as to ensure integration. But suddenly, government came up one time that they wanted to sell the unity schools to private hands. We didn’t know about that decision, all their meetings in that regard were done without consulting us, then at the eleventh hour, they called us to the Villa that they were introducing something in which they wanted somebody to take over the unity schools and we kicked against it. We said no, you should have consulted us from the beginning and we would have advised you that it would not be good to hand over the unity schools to private hands because if that is done, the aim of establishing the schools would be defeated. The person coming to buy would raise the fees and then the so-called unity schools would become schools for only the rich. It would now mean that only those in that particular locality will be the ones that will attend such schools. At the end, the purpose of establishing the unity schools would be defeated. So, we kicked against it, even the policy on the child rights which we are copying from Britain and America that a child must have his right, that if you scold a child for wrong doing he can take you to court, I say all that is not in our culture. That can happen in foreign lands but here, even if you are well of age with white beard, as long as your father is still alive, you are still answerable to him. Your father will still take up the responsibility of catering for you, if you want to marry, he still gets you a wife, if you don’t have a house, he gets you accommodation, if you don’t have money to spend, he gives you. So you are now telling me that that boy should go and sue his father in court (laughs). It is not proper. It is not right to give a Nigerian child that right to sue his parents. These are areas we would have advised government appropriately. Some governments see the traditional institution as those that want to usurp their authority. They put the traditional institution in the residual list whereby any state can decide whatever they want to do. When Abacha was in power, he even gave us more recognition by approving that 5% allocation should go to the traditional institution but that 5% is not applicable in every state. Some obas, obis and emirs are operating without any allocation. We are not agitating for any authoritative position or powers. In those days of the Native Authority, the traditional institution was very powerful. Any judicial decision or pronouncement must go through the emir. That is not what we are asking for. We want to work with the judiciary and the local government authorities. Any time you are making policies and programmes, consult us so that we will be able to advise you whether such policy will suit our people or not. We are at the grassroots and we know the people better. For instance, government would come up with the idea of building primary health centres in villages and at the end of the day, doctors would not go there, there is no water, no electricity and no drugs. How would you expect such health centres to work? How many doctors will want to leave the cities to go to villages where there are no social amenities? If they had consulted us, we would advise them to concentrate on building standard health centres at the local government headquarters and alongside what you are doing, make sure you provide water and electricity so that the doctors would be motivated to work there. Even if it is twice in a week that a doctor is around, he would have a comfortable environment. If you don’t provide those necessary facilities at the health centres, they won’t attract the doctors. We want a situation whereby in the state executive council, we have a member, in the local government executive council, we have a member and in the federal executive council, we have a member so that what policy or programme that is brought up, right from inception, we will know and be able to make our contributions. We want to serve in advisory role as it was in the second republic where we had a House of Chiefs in Kaduna. At that time, the Sardauna of Sokoto used to chair the House of Chiefs. All the emirs would be assembled there and deliberate on issues bordering on healthcare, agriculture and education and aggregate opinions.
You have worked with various governors in Niger State over the past 17 years, what has been your relationship with the state executives?
The very appreciable and commendable aspect is that they give us the respect as a traditional institution and then, they give us a sort of support to run our emirate council. But the aspect of human endeavor and the life of our people, most times, decisions are taken by the government without consulting us. You want us to implement that policy you came about without consulting us. That is where the problem is. And that is what we have been hammering on. Before any decision is taken, as government of the people, by the people and for the people, why can’t you consult the custodians of the people so that what you are doing is going to be for the people? They are looking at it that if they do that, we would usurp their powers, that is not correct. It’s just like you are the father of the house and you know what is in your house. If anybody wants to bring something to your house now, can the person come and do that thing without consulting you? You are the one that know what are actually your pressing needs in your house. If what you need is a bag of garri for instance and somebody is bringing 10 bags of salt for you, will you accept it? You must first be consulted. That is what we are saying. Government should ask us and get our contributions in whatever they want to do for our people. We will tell you what the people really need. I think there is a missing link between the political class and the electorate. Some of these politicians would make a lot of promises and after, they would run away. Some would say we want to accomplish our promises without consulting anybody. Some of the promises they made are not really advantageous to the people. Even if you execute those projects for them, they don’t appreciate it because that is not what they really need. So you must study the crucial challenges to them. Focus on those things that would impact their lives. For instance, you see politicians appointing people as special advisers instead of empowering such people to establish businesses or make progress in their vocations. Why appointing a butcher to become an SA when you can buy cows for him to go and sell to make more money for himself? You appoint retinues of SAs and you would be giving them money at the end of the month. That money you would have used to bring development to the people. If you want to help the youths, call them and find out what they can do, then you empower them to go and establish their own trades. From there, the fellow will pick up. As a carpenter, they appoint you as an SA, you no longer go back to your workshop.
The issue of security is very important, how have you been managing that in your emirate?
Fortunately and unfortunately for me; fortunately, I was trained to be a security personnel on how to protect, defend and discharge my duties. Unfortunately, I’m now in a position where I cannot use my knowledge to achieve security, I can only advise. That is why anytime I see security challenges in my area, God in His infinite mercy has given me wisdom and knowledge to do certain things that will help in protecting my people. That is why I came up with the idea of community security apart from the vigilantes. I have the Etsu’s Security Committee and that committee came up due to some security issues. Youths in Bida by 6pm would strategise in various locations and molest people, especially women. They would molest them, seize everything from them and do whatever they wanted. These happened despite the presence of the police. I continued getting reports, women could not go out to certain areas once it was 6pm. When I reported to the police, they would say they were doing patrols and sometimes they would say they don’t have fuel and I would give them money for fuel. Yet, the situation did not change. Then, I said okay, let me get a few youths who are disciplined, determined and committed to wage war against those ones who are taking laws into their hands. That was how I came about this security committee. I gave them the charge that any child that they saw roaming the streets and fomenting trouble, should be arrested. That was how the situation changed. Because they now discovered that it was no longer the police but their fellow youths who are now checkmating them. They even follow them up to their hideouts where they take hard drugs and bring them out to punish. Even some of the parents who have lost control of their children do come to the security committee to report cases. The police are doing their best but their best is not good enough. I urge the authorities to increase the strength of the police and equip them better. Their training should be improved so that they would be able to take up the challenge. And then, deploy them adequately to areas so that they will be able to surmount the security challenges.
