Igwe Dr. Emmanuel Ugwu, the youthful traditional ruler of Ibeagwa Nike autonomous community, is also the chairman, Council of Traditional Rulers in Enugu East Local Government Area, Enugu State. In this interview with Sunday Trust, he spoke on cultural integration and national unity, as well as the need to give royal fathers more constitutional roles. Excerpts:
Last year, you invited some notable personalities from the North and South-West zones of the country to your kingdom. You said you were going to “build a bridge’’ across the Niger. You also promised to fashion out ways to tackle the security challenge in the country. How far have you gone?
We are building a bridge across the Niger. Last year, precisely on December 30, 2012, I invited some of my friends (traditional rulers) from the North, including His Royal Highness, Justice Mamman Nasir, Galadima of Katsina, the traditional ruler of Malumfashi, a retired jurist. I also invited Maitama Sule, an educationist and well-grounded Nigerian. I invited so many northerners, and some from the western part of the country. We discussed national unity, using cultural integration. We discussed varieties of problems in Nigeria, actions and reactions.
I am using cultural unionism to bring people of like minds together so that we can reason together and stay together. Maitama Sule, who was the guest speaker, spoke more on national integration, and so did many other speakers from different parts of the country. They all agreed that politicians should separate themselves from anything that would dehumanise other people. This is so because God cannot judge anyone as a royal father, priest, imam, sultan or president. God will judge you in accordance with your work to humanity; what you contributed while you lived on earth.
As a traditional ruler and friend to so many northerners and westerners, I use my position to bring my friends together. There is need for us to always sit down and discuss as royal fathers. We need to talk about the unity of this country. The moment you bind brooms together they can sweep very well, but when you separate them, a single broom will not sweep very well. We need ourselves; we need each other irrespective of our different faith. So in my own little way, I’ve been making efforts to make sure that people of this country understand themselves as one family, not just as a country.
What is the cause of the disunity in the country?
Well, one cannot speak more on the cause because there are certain things I won’t be able to say how they started. But I know that when you build a house and that house doesn’t have a good foundation, the pillars will be shaking. I know that we have founders. When they speak about the founders of this country, they mention people like Tafawa Balewa, Ahmadu Bello, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo, and they rest of them. People who mention their names do so because they see them as selfless and patriotic people who thought more about their country. But are their successors thinking the same way? I think that’s the problem.
How will the problem be tackled?
What I believe is that we must first understand where we are coming from. What is our origin? Our origin is that we all come from one family, owned by the most supreme deity that we call God. We call him in different names; we describe him in different perceptions. All we know is that Muslims, Hindus, Christians have just one God. My own understanding of Christianity is that Christ founded it as a religion through which his own followers would know God. That is also the case with Muhammadu, the Hindus and so on. The central essence of this is that we have one universal law: Love your neighbour as you love yourself. Whatever you think that others would do to you and you wouldn’t like it, don’t do it to others.
So the best way to tackle the problem is for us to believe that these great men who found the essence of this knowledge were just thinking about the one human family, where people should understand themselves. We must understand ourselves under the banner of the Most High God, knowing very well that the moment you are a Christian and you don’t love your Muslim brother, you are not a real practitioner of the religion of God. The same thing applies to the Muslim.
Let us talk about God here, not necessarily religion. We are predominantly under the influence of religion; we don’t know what God is all about. We think we are fighting for our religion. But, who is the owner of the religion? And mind you, the founders of the knowledge did not think that way; they were thinking about serving God and humanity generally. And that is the only way Nigeria will cling to God and things get changed - people will begin to think more about others. The moment we begin to think more about others, how they will succeed, then things will begin to change. That is how the nation will succeed.
In no distant time we will clock 100 years as a nation, so we need to sit down and review our activities over the years. Have we lived well? If we have not lived well as a family, what is the reason? How do we handle the situation? How do we rebuild this pillar? This house is falling; how do we rebuild it? We cannot avoid sitting down to discuss. People of like-minds must come together and know where we have failed and where we have succeeded.
You talk of building a bridge across the Niger. A northerner used to be the Mayor of Enugu; are you thinking of bringing back the olden days when unity was the watchword?
Yes, more of such things. When a northerner was the Mayor of Enugu Municipal people enjoyed his era. We did not hear that he was murdered because he was not from the Igbo race. A lot of Igbo people are even in the present administration in Kano State and other places in the North. At least, I know of a man from Imo State who is a special adviser to the governor of Adamawa State. That is the type of thing I want. That is exactly what we need to be doing.
They say traditional rulers have a vital role to play in ensuring the unity of the nation; how can this be actualised?
Well, I believe that traditional institutions are highly respected in the sense of human relations. But I wouldn’t like it to be politicised or be placed on the gallery of cosmetics. I know that if the traditional institutions are being incorporated into the Nigeria constitution and a role assigned to us; you cannot say because some traditional rulers are not doing well, everybody is like that. This time around, some professors are native rulers; most traditional rulers are retired major- generals and so on. So we have quality people in the traditional institutions. And that is why I believe that when you look at somebody and know the kind of role he can play, you assign the role to him. Let our position be highly incorporated into the Nigerian constitution, with a role being specified for us. And I tell you the truth, we as traditional rulers are in the position to tackle most of these security challenges in the society. This is because those causing the problems are our subjects and we know them.
The authorities should understand that the palaces of all traditional rulers are supposed to serve as security intelligence desk for information gathering. We are closer to the people who smoke Indian hemp; aggressive people, including youths that have no jobs. We know those who can create restiveness. Government should give us a sense of belonging to be able to tackle some of these problems.
sunday trust
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