By Andy Ezeani, August 5, 2025
Simon Lalong, the Senator representing Plateau South in the Senate wants the general public to know that the bill he sponsored on establishing the National Council of Traditional Rulers did not include any provision for permanent leadership of the council. Reports were rife in the media recently about the bill at the Senate, which seeks to have the Sultan of Sokoto and the Ooni of Ife enthroned as permanent co-Chairman of the proposed traditional rulers’ council.
The said proposal for permanent co-chairmanship of traditional rulers promptly drew the ire of almost all sections of the indigenous peoples across Nigeria.The people were piqued at the temerity of the attempt by some elements to impose a permanent leadership on traditional rulers in the country.
Now, if Senator Lalong, who sponsored the bill for establishing such a Council, said he did not propose any such clause on permanent leadership for the said council, who did? The matter could not have come to public attention from nowhere.
The issue of who attempted to smuggle the vexatious clause into the bill may not be of much relevance any more. Whatever the fate of the bill at the upper legislative chambers, that particular aspect of the proposal has been settled, as it were.
There is however, the weighty question of relevance. What is the value and need of a constitutionally-created National Council of Traditional Rulers in modern democracy that already has a bicameral legislature? Maybe one chamber of the present National Assembly may give way for the traditional rulers. This, though, is an entirely different issue that deserves full attention.
For now, however, what has emerged from the sharp reaction to the repudiated plan is the heightened sensitivity of the indigenous peoples in Nigeria to matters of their identity. Whosoever was responsible for the surreptitious attempt to impose the Sultan of Sokoto and the Ooni of Ife on their colleagues across Nigeria obviously underestimated a few things about Nigeria of this moment. Lessons can be learnt from mischief, anyway.
Unfortunately for the Sultan of Sokoto, he became the major loser in the plot to impose him and the Ooni on the gathering of traditional rulers in the country. The plot collapsed at source. The head of the Sokoto Caliphate would surely have wished that whosoever tried to do him the favour of foisting him on Nigeria’s traditional rulers did not make the move in the first place.
The Sultan, though of noble bearing, has found himself in the sobering position that an ambitious person of questionable lineage is often consigned if such an individual attempts to overreach his status at birth. In such a situation, people learn and hear things that were hitherto muttered.
In the main, the Sultan of Sokoto is a lofty religious stool. The Sultan is the head of the Islamic faith in Nigeria. Over the years, however, the stool has acquired and wielded temporal influence as well, substantially blurring the line between the religious and the political.
The power and the influence of the head of the Caliphate in Nigeria have always been wielded subtly and deftly. Their impact was more felt than seen in various instances.
Personalities are, however, always different. In recent times, that subtlety appears to have given way to very conspicuous presence in the political sphere. Even at that, many traditional rulers and distinct ethnic nationalities would not have taken umbrage at such development as the attempted surreptitious imposition of the Sultan on the Council of Traditional Rulers, but for what Muhammadu Buhari’s Presidency did.
The importation of Fulanis from across the Sahel region by Buhari and his cohorts, in preparation for the war that they planned had he lost the 2015 election, has become a burden for Nigeria, both Nigerian Fulanis and the rest of the people. The ongoing terrorist onslaught across the land by the imported Fulanis, obviously in pursuit of a clear ethno-religious agenda, has imposed a burden that Nigerian Fulanis cannot escape. They are now looked at with so much distrust and suspicion.
It does not help matters that the Sultan is also the patron of Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN), the Fulani group with all its incendiary tendencies, declarations and even acceptance of some heinous attacks on various indigenous ethnic nationalities.
The Middle Belt Forum (MBF) noted in its reaction to the denied proposal that the Sultan never utters a word when he was expected to condemn acts of aggression by Fulani groups.
Of no less serious concern also is that even with the ill-designed importation of foreign Fulanis by Buhari, the name of the Sultan was never far from the reports, although he was never accused or blamed of being involved. The Sultan has therefore found himself drawing much more suspicion that was the case with his predecessors.
The profound historical narratives from the Middle Belt Forum and the Hausa ethnic group, rejecting any prospect of the Sultan of Sokoto leading a council of traditional rulers in the country, reflect the level of sensitivity of the indigenous peoples in Nigeria at the moment. The Sultan has become for many of the indigenous groups, a symbol of a haunting specter they resist and reject. It was not always that way.
Had the attempt to foist the Sultan on the traditional rulers not been made by whoever, the Sultan would not have heard clearly what the riled ethnic nationalities and their traditional stools think of him. Now he knows.
The unassailable historical account by the Middle Belt Forum, of the standing and protocol of traditional stools in the zone, in relation to the Sultan’s stool, as well as the equally deep dip into history by the Hausas, are critical reminders that present and emerging leaders of Nigeria need to pay attention to. Out of the trials and tragedies of recent times can emerge helpful lessons that will help Nigeria if it intends to sincerely forge a common union.
Knowledge of historical and ethnological fabrics of the country will always be useful to guide those who habour aspirations, especially of unattainable hegemony. Who ever attempted to foist the Sultan of Sokoto and the Ooni of Ife on any Council of Traditional Rulers in the country must have learnt few valuable lessons, as has the Sultan and the rest of us.
Andy Ezeani is a Nigerian journalist and media consultant.He was trained at the University of Lagos,Nigeria and the University of Maryland,College Park,USA. He is a newspaper columnist and was at various times editor,Daily Champion Newspaper, editor,Sunday Champion,Reporter,The Guardian newspaper, Lagos, Head of Publicity Division,Independent National Electoral Commission and Chief Press Secretary to the Honourable Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Nigeria
