Traditional rulers in the country on Thursday urged the National Assembly to restore its constitutional powers which were eroded...
Traditional rulers in the country on Thursday urged the National Assembly to restore its constitutional powers which were eroded by the 1967 and 1976 Local Government Reform Decrees.
Yahaya said: “Between the 1920s and 1960s, Traditional Rulers were very influential and in charge of the Native Authority Administration. He noted that major areas of conflicts in the country today are on religion, ethnicity and land resources.He insisted that before the 1976 Local Government Reforms which stripped Traditional Rulers of their powers, “there were never any recorded serious incidences of religious, ethnic or land related conflicts where hundreds of lives were lost as is obtained nowadays.”
According to the royal father, the 1979 Constitution incorporated the functions of Local Governments as enumerated in the 1976 guidelines and also established a council of chiefs at the state level… “The Constitutional provision should provide for States to enact laws to cater for specific peculiar matters relating to traditional rulers in the respective states.
“It is even more apt today than it was at that time. So we are really going to need you. We don’t need to convince people too much about this. We just need to work out the structures here at the national level which you already articulated in your presentation and the structures at the state level.