ABEOKUTA– The Alake and Paramount ruler of Egba-land, HRM Adedotun Aremu Gbadebo, has urged the military to stick to their roles as provided in the constitution, adding that they have no role in governance.
Oba Gbadebo stated this Tuesday, while briefing newsmen at his palace in Abeokuta, as part of activities marking his 80th birthday.
Alake’s call is on the heels of coup d’etat in several african countries which according to him is setting a bad precedent for democracy in the continent.
It will be recalled that the military has recently taken over in Niger, Burkina Faso and Gabon.
He however asked the military to allow the Nigerian politicians make mistakes, saying that “a wrong can’t be put right with another wrong”.
The monarch who himself was a former Principal Staff Officer to Major-General Tunde Idiagbon, the Chief of Staff at the Supreme Headquarters, Dodan Barracks, from January 1984 to September 1985, retired from the army as a Colonel.
“The military has constitutional roles to play, it is written in the constitution of every nation and I will appeal to the military to keep to its constitutional role because governance is the work of the military and we all saw what happened in 1998 in Nigeria before the change of government in 1999.
“So let everybody play his role for which the constitution had provided, the role the constitution assigned to each person is what that person should follow or what the group of people should follow.
“If politicians are making mistakes, let them make mistakes, they will correct themselves, they will get better and better still and Nigeria will get stronger at the end of the day.”
Speaking on the security challenges facing the country, Oba Gbadebo reiterates the role of the traditional institutions, saying that the government should ensure more roles are given to the traditional rulers.
“I am sure nobody is happy about the security situation in Nigeria, but it is a major government business, the security of lives and properties is a major job of any that is worth being called government.
“The new government is working hard on this, but security is the business of all of us so we must work in tandem with the security agencies if we want to sleep with our two eyes closed.
“We must report any strange movement, we must report anything that will later turned out to be dangerous to the lives of our people. Nobody brings money into a country where there is insecurity, so investment can never come here if the investor himself cannot even visit his establishment and see what is being done with his money. So let us make it a business of everybody to work with security agencies and government to make Nigeria a safer place”, he added
