Last week, Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf painted a pathetic picture of the state of primary education in Kano. “Above 4.7 million pupils are sitting on bare floors to take lessons while about 400 schools have only one teacher for all classes subjects and all pupils,” said Yusuf who put the current figure of out-of-school children in the state at 989,234. Not surprisingly, he blamed his predecessor, Abdullahi Ganduje for the problem. “Rather than building more classrooms and providing basic furniture in the schools, as well as hiring more teachers, the administration we took over from chose to butcher the land belonging to those schools. In some places, it demolished classrooms to create space for shops.” The schools that could not be sold, according to Yusuf, were closed. “The encroachment of public-school lands and the conversion of these vital institutions into private business premises is an affront to our communal values and a direct assault on our commitment to public education. This reckless appropriation of educational spaces for commercial use is unacceptable and must stop immediately.”

The growing number of out-of-school children has become not only a social problem but a serious national security challenge. More worrisome is what appears to be the lack of any concerted effort to deal with this vexatious problem beyond bandying statistics. According to the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), a huge percentage of the world’s total number of out-of-school children come from Nigeria. And this is not only a Kano problem. While perhaps more pronounced in the north, no state is free of the problem which is compounded by projections that Nigeria’s population could rise to 440 million by 2050. Such uncontrolled population growth of largely illiterate people poses a serious threat to the survival of a nation. Besides, it is from this constituency that criminal cartels now recruit their members. After all, as the saying goes, an idle hand is the devil’s workshop.

Yet, there is hardly any national conversation regarding primary schools. This tragic error has become the bane of education management in Nigeria. Our obsession with university education is based on the warped thinking that we can build a house from the roof while we discount the foundation, which primary schools represent. A recent report by the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) that no fewer than 27 states in the country have failed to access the sum of N54.9 billion basic education fund as of the end of March this year is very telling. The UBEC fund is an annual grant to help states upgrade primary schools. But to access the money, they are required to match the federal government’s grant. To evade accountability, many states ignore this facility even as children study under deplorable conditions, including lessons under trees and in dilapidated classrooms.

The growing population of out-of-school children is a symptom of the larger problem of irresponsible procreation. Unfortunately, population control is rarely discussed in Nigeria, not only because we choose to live in denial about what ails us but also because once we cloak an issue in the garb of religion, it becomes taboo for any serious engagement. The major concern about our rapidly growing population, as Dimos Sakellaridis, a population control advocate once reminded us, is the absence of infrastructural support. Especially since social services like schools, health care facilities etc. are not also growing at an equally comparable rate. In fact, they are deteriorating everyday which means that the only thing we are producing at a comparative advantage in Nigeria today are babies.

It should worry all critical stakeholders that a demographic crisis is already upon us. That there is a class dimension to this crisis merely compounds the problem. Deutsche Welle (DW), a German international broadcaster, recently produced a documentary on Nigeria’s exploding population. “Having a large family is a blessing from God. I am a product of a large family. I like a large family,” a resident of Makoko waterfront slum in Lagos who has three wives and 18 children reportedly said without a care about how to raise such a huge number of children that may end up on the street. “As a youth, I decided that, when I was older, I would have a large family.”

That mindset is replicated across the country by thousands of poor people based on the illusion that Nigeria is a wealthy country. We have never been one, though the potential was huge at independence 64 years ago. Even if we didn’t squander our riches, the rate at which our population has grown from 45.2 million to 229 million today would still be a problem. Meanwhile, in 1960, the population of the United Kingdom was 52 million, meaning that the country from which we were gaining independence had about seven million more people than Nigeria. Today, the UK is about 68 million, an increase of almost 14 percent over the past 62 years while Nigeria’s estimated population has increased by about 500 percent!

At some point we must come to terms with the reality that at the rate our population is growing amid dwindling resources, there is no way millions of children will not be left behind to our collective detriment. There must therefore be an enlightenment campaign on responsible procreation. “The resources available are unable to meet the basic needs of the growing population,” John Oyefara, a professor of demography at the University of Lagos, told DW. “This has resulted in inadequate facilities in our health sector, food security, housing, transportation and even employment.”

The numbers don’t look good. As of 2020, Nigeria’s share in the global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) adjusted for purchasing power parity (which is used to measure both the economic growth and living standards in any country) amounted to approximately 0.81 percent. Meanwhile, using data from the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) World Factbook, Pratap Vardin, an Indian full-stack data science engineer, came up with a graphic of countries where the next 1,000 babies would statistically be born into based on population and birth rates estimates. By his projection, 57 of those babies would be born in Nigeria. That means we will account for about six per cent of children born into the world who will then have to battle for less than one percent of global resources!

There is ample evidence to suggest that most educated and relatively comfortable people in our society produce only the number they believe they can care for. In fact, most of the middle-class professionals who have embraced the ‘Japa’ syndrome do so for their children, despite the sacrifices involved. On the other hand, it is those who are at the lower rung of society who have no qualms about having as many children as they like without considering the welfare of those they are bringing into the world. Having allowed the majority of our people to remain chained to belief systems that shun family planning, we now have a huge but largely unproductive population on our hands. If we are to develop as a society, we need an enforceable population policy that is tied to incentives as it is done in several countries.

As I have written several times on this page, the 1974 controversial book, ‘Lifeboat Ethics: The case against helping the poor’ by Garrett Hardin has now become a ready handbook for policy makers in most immigration departments of Western countries. It also accounts for the rise of right-wing leaders to positions of power and why opportunities for ‘Japa’ are shrinking in most of these countries. Metaphorically, according to the late American ecologist and microbiologist who focused his career on the issue of human overpopulation, “Each rich nation can be seen as a lifeboat full of comparatively rich people. In the ocean outside each lifeboat swim the poor of the world, who would like to get in, or at least to share some of the wealth.” He then asked: “What should the lifeboat passengers do?”

This was the way Hardin answered his own question 50 years ago: “So here we sit, say 50 people in our lifeboat. To be generous, let us assume it has room for 10 more, making a total capacity of 60. Suppose the 50 of us in the lifeboat see 100 others swimming in the water outside, begging for admission to our boat or for handouts. We have several options: we may be tempted to try to live by the Christian ideal of being ‘our brother’s keeper,’ or by the Marxist ideal of ‘to each according to his needs.’ Since the needs of all in the water are the same, and since they can all be seen as ‘our brothers,’ we could take them all into our boat, making a total of 150 in a boat designed for 60. The boat swamps, everyone drowns. Complete justice, complete catastrophe.”

The critical point in Hardin’s thesis is that most of the countries from where citizens flee are suffering the consequences of the choices their people make, especially regarding an unbridled population explosion. “The harsh ethics of the lifeboat become harsher when we consider the reproductive differences between rich and poor. A wise and competent government saves out of the production of the good years in anticipation of bad years to come. Joseph taught this policy to Pharaoh in Egypt more than 2,000 years ago. Yet the great majority of the governments in the world today do not follow such a policy,” Hardin wrote. “They lack either the wisdom or the competence, or both. On the average poor countries undergo a 2.5 percent increase in population each year; rich countries, about 0.8 percent. Because of the higher rate of population growth in the poor countries of the world, 88 percent of today’s children are born poor, and only 12 percent rich. Year by year the ratio becomes worse, as the fast-reproducing poor outnumber the slow-reproducing rich…”

For decades, we have sold the myth, especially to the poor of our society, that the government is responsible for taking care of them. And that the only problem is ‘corruption’ which our politicians keep ‘fighting’. The message must be that everyone is ultimately responsible for themselves and their family. Conducting a conversation on this issue is more urgent than ever before. We need voices like that of the Zamfara State Council of Chiefs chairman and Emir of Anka, Alhaji Attahiru Muhammad Ahmad, who once cautioned low-income earners against marrying more than one wife. “Civil servants on a salary of N15,000 a month marry more than one wife and end up raising families they cannot cater for,” the emir said. “It is this attitude that is responsible for increasing out-of-school children because the parents cannot shoulder the responsibility.”

On the immediate challenge, Kano and the other states must find the human and material resources to take children off the streets and put them in schools. But in the long term, Nigerians must also begin to understand that only a moderate population growth that enables a high quality of life for citizens can guarantee a sustainable society.

President Muhammadu Buhari was less than a year in office when he realized that his officials would not be able to produce the budget for FY 2017 on time. His Budget and National Planning Minister, Senator Udoma Udo Udoma, was frantically seeking help, not only to produce the federal proposal, but also to reform and reposition the entire budgeting process. The 2016 appropriation bill was signed into law by the president very late in the year; and it was replete with irregularities. It then was clear to senior administration officials that the Budget Office of the Federation, an agency responsible for designing and drawing up the federal government’s budget proposals, required an experienced and suitably qualified leader to do the job. The man at the saddle then was clearly below his depth. Fourteen years earlier, Senator Udoma was the chairman of the Senate’s Appropriation Committee – an influential and powerful Committee that scrutinizes and approves the federal budgets and those of its over 300 parastatals. He knows a lot about the budgeting process and technicalities involved, and was therefore in a hurry to headhunt a man of requisite and cognate skills to lead the Budget Office.

 Enter Ben Ifeanyichukwu Akabueze. Early in 2016, Akabueze was appointed Special Adviser to the President on National Planning, but his job description did not include budget preparations. He had observed the debacle in the Budget Office and all the commotion surrounding the 2016 proposals, but in the nature of Nigeria’s public service, he could only offer suggestions. Somebody then mentioned to Udoma that Ben was the right man to fix the mess. After a few consultations and discussions and Senator Udoma’s recommendation, the president promptly moved Akabueze to the to the Budget Office as the sixth Director General with a clear mandate to ensure the presentation of the annual budgets to the National Assembly by September of every year; review the annual budget and advise on the necessity or otherwise of a supplementary budget and reconcile and monitor monthly performance of key revenue agencies.

A fellow of three renowned professional bodies, (Institute of Chartered Accountants; Chartered Institute of Bankers and institute of Credit Administration), Akabueze came highly recommended for the assignment, and he soon proved that his selection was one of Buhari’s few fit-for-purpose appointments. Ben or Pastor Ben, as friends fondly call him, is one of the nation’s brightest, analytical yet unassuming professionals. For about nine years prior, he had served as the Commissioner for Budget and Economic Planning in Lagos State, having been appointed by Gov. Tinubu in 2006 and reappointed by Gov. Fashola in 2007. Before then, he was the Managing Director & CEO of NAL Bank (now Sterling Bank) from 2000 to 2005.

There were rumours then that it was Asiwaju Tinubu, then National Leader of the APC, that had facilitated his appointment as the SA to the President, and subsequent deployment to the BOF. Both Akabueze and Udoma refused to comment on this when I asked them. A few months after Ben took the job, Senator Udoma told me in his office. ‘’I am lucky to have Ben around. He is sorting out the headaches in the Budget Office’’. I told Udoma that I knew Akabueze well, and that he had in December 2000 tapped me to lead the Corporate Communications department at NAL. ‘’He will make a difference’’, I assured him. I have been blessed to walk and work with the best of Nigerians in my long careers spanning two professions. Akabueze’s leadership and accomplishments as the nation’s chief budget officer between 2016 and 2024 are transformative, tangible and outstanding. I salute him for his unblemished records and sterling achievements in all of the two terms. He served with dedication, diligence and commitment.

Under him, the budget office recorded improvements in the quality and comprehensiveness of the budget documents, leveraging technology to achieve improved levels of citizens’ engagements in the budgeting process. We now have full disclosures of federal government’s payments; improved transparency, governance, service delivery and accountability. Multi-lateral and bi-lateral project tied loans as well as grants and donor-funded projects are now reflected in the federal government budget, unlike in the past when the process was marred by opacity and lack of clarity. In addition, fiscal risks and contingent liabilities are also included in the budget pack. There’s been also improved coordination and collaboration between the executive and legislature leading to a return to the predictable January-December budget cycle, for the first time since 1999. Until then, it was only the military regimes that were able to issue budget speeches on New Year Day. Another important change that Ben and his team introduced is the inclusion of the budgets of all government-owned enterprises in the federal budget presented by the president to the National Assembly. Further, there’s also been significant improvements in the budget and expenditure management of the MDAs.

Internally, Akabueze also restructured the BOF and took his management and staff through a visioning process that developed a vision and mission statement for the organization. Its mission is to provide efficient and qualitative budget functions to Nigeria, geared towards promoting fiscal sustainability, transparency and accountability in public finance management for national development in line with international best practices. Clearly, the achievements listed above are in with the mission. Its vision is to be a world-class technology-driven budget institution that is a catalyst for equitable distribution of the nation’s resources to engender sustainable socio-economic development. It is for no reason that he’s also known as Mr. Budget.

Last week, I asked Akabueze to review his tenure at BOF and all the other significant positions he’s held. As he is wont to do, he contemplated the question for a while and then said, ’I have done my best. Nigerians should do the assessment’.

There is hardly anyone who does not aspire to add value to their life. Everyone wants to make progress. Everyone wants a better life. That was the expectation of Nigerians, especially the suffering masses, when President Bola Ahmed Tinubu assumed office on May 29th last year.

And that also must have been the expectation or desire of Tinubu himself: to make life more abundant for Nigerians; to make a difference in the existentialism of the people. But good intentions do not always translate into actualities; which is why it is said that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Man proposes, circumstances dispose. Talk, as they say, is cheap but to walk the talk is a lot more difficult.

I wish I could have the opportunity to ask the president how he feels one year after achieving his life ambition of ruling this country. Sometimes when I watched him on television, he looked dazed like a boxer caught unawares with a vicious uppercut. Nigeria is not easy to govern. I, however, still retain my confidence in the ability, capability, and capacity of Mr. President to survive the jostling he has so far got and begin to do the right things beginning with his second year in office.

In his first year, Tinubu has more than settled those who brought him to power. That, I dare to guess, is the reason why he has so many deadwood in his cabinet, which now made it look like his ability to headhunt talents had been exaggerated. I want to tell him that the last one year is enough settlement of his IOU to this group of people.

He has also over-settled the National Assembly, even up to the point of the obscene. Yes, he needed them to approve his appointees and to back him up with the needed legislation. He needed, if not a pliant legislature, but one that is accommodating and cooperative We have seen antagonistic legislature and bellicose executive and the country has been the loser for it; for, as they say, when two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers. The humongous allocations that the National Assembly awarded themselves in the current budget should last them for the next four years and must not be allowed to rear its ugly head in the next budget.

The third arm of government, the judiciary, has also een settled by Tinubu with the 300 percent salary increase awarded the judges. It now remains for the president toshift his attention to the masses.

How can he add value to our lives? By reversing the negatives he met on ground, especially those he had inadvertently made worse by policies that are yet to have the desired positive effects in the specific areas of food security, security of life and property, affordable transportation and Medicare, reduction in the cost of governance, promotion of industrial harmony, ensuring that peace reigns on our campuses and education is made affordable for all, curbing inflation and arresting mass unemployment. These are all that the President promised in his Renewed Hope Agenda 2023.

Since he is yet to publicly renege, like his predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari, did with his own promises, we must hold his feet to the fire on them. Promise is a debt if not fulfilled. Tinubu is indebted to us Nigerians. What can his excuse be? That we are not taking care of him enough? Nigerians are generous when it comes to taking care of their leaders. Conversely, it is the leaders who are miserly and stingy when it comes to their turn to take care of the people.

I wish President Bola Ahmed Tinubu had been at the launching of the book “Value creation: Your pathway to enduring business and career success” written by Ademola Akinbola, a man of many parts - media entrepreneur, certified trainer, author, publisher and journalist, with strong footing in business/finance reporting. He was also a Bank PR manager. The launching took place in Lagos on May 14, 2024.

I advocated sometimes ago that we need a special assistant to the president whose duty is to monitor workshops, seminars, book lanchings and lectures because of the rich exchange of ideas at such fora which can even be more beneficial to the country than the limited knowledge parading itself within the corridors of power.

Now, why are nations poor? Nations are poor because they create little or no value for themselves and others. Conversely, why are nations rich? Nations are rich because they create value for themselves as well as for others. By value we mean goods, services, commodities and other needs of mankind. Nations that cannot meet their own needs will depend on those who can meet those needs. So, their resources will gravitate towards such countries. The nations that are able to meet those needs get richer while the nations that depend on others get poorer. Another name for it is capital flight.

If you want to know why Nigeria is poor while Japan is rich, just count the millions of vehicles on our roads. One statistics say about 80 percent of them are Japanese products. Try and imagine how many trillions of Naira or dollars must have flown and is still flowing from Nigeria to Japan. Take a statistics of the number of generating sets, mobile phones, electronics, medicine, etc. that this country imports on a yearly basis. This is not to talk of food imports, military hardware, education and medical tourism, among others. Where capital outflow far supercedes capital inflow, it is naive to ask why such countries are poor.

Now, the Lagos - Calabar expressway will be handled by foreigners. Capital flight. We shall be helping to develop another country while underdeveloping ours.The hundreds of bullet proof limousines that were distributed to legislators and others. Capital flight! We are like the proverbial fool that uses a cup to take water from his bucket and pour into the well of his neighbour. In which area or sector are we creating value?

We collect rent from foreigners on our crude oil and gas resources, which we cannot even extract or refine ourselves. Which is why the Marxists call us a rentier State. We then waste the rent so collected on importation binge. We produce virtually nothing but luxuriate in virtually every imported goods and services. Man became separated from and assumed superiority over other animals when he became a tool maker. Tell me, what tools can we make? How, then, shall we not be poor and remain so? Our problem is not minimum wage but minimum sense.

This is the major problem I expect President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to address. When I ask that Labour and ASUU leaders should think out of the box, this is one area I think they should address if they are serious about tackling the grinding poverty of the poor. But I will not be surprised if that is not their priority. Last April at the NLC House in Abuja, I saw the NLC president, Joe Ajaero, step out of one jeep that looked like the ones the legislators are cruising in! The demarcation between bourgeois capitalism and Labour unionism is very thin, if not completely blurred already! But I digress!

The major task before President Tinubu is to quickly work to reduce Nigeria’s dependence on other nations and not further deepen it, as we are doing at the moment. Seeking Foreign Direct Investment or taking loans which we immediately award back to them in form of this or that contract will not help us. Reduce our dependence on others. Increase our productivity. Stop this country from continuing to be dumping ground for all manner of foreign goods and commodities. Add value to what we have. Reduce the trade deficit between us and our trading partners. Put Nigeria to work.

At Akinbola’s book launch, speaker after speaker - from the chairman of the occasion Bisi Olatilo, guest speaker, Dr. Rotimi Adelola, panelists Dr. Tunji Sobodu, Dr. Charles Otudor, Gbolahan Oba and the book reviewer, Lanre Alabi - all were agreed that unless we create value as a nation, we stand no chance of escaping the debt trap, to which have now been added the wheat trap and the rice trap - and still growing! As with nations, so also with individuals. Add value!

Making a difference between creating value and adding value, Sobodu said leaders are given to create value. If people are not improving under you , then, you are a destroyer. People don't just become value creators; if your motivation is self, then, you cannot create value. You create value when you meet other people's needs. Solutions, he said, must meet the needs of the people. This is true of nations as it is of individuals.

Said Akinbola himself: “Nobody pays for a good that is not delivered, a service that is not rendered, or an impact that is not made. Simply put, we are rewarded by doing something that adds value or creates an impact.
“We become successful in life by creating value for our stakeholders, who we can define as individuals and organisations that are directly or indirectly affected or influenced by what we say or do, and what we fail to say or do.
“You must commit to a life that delivers value, and not one that has nothing tangible to offer, except to be a burden and a liability to your stakeholders.
“A life that is not focused on value and impact will be ridiculed, scorned, and rejected. Nobody would like to be associated with you when you are listless, valueless, and empty”.

It could not have been better put!

In the last one week, the Federal High Court and the National Industrial Court have separately conferred jurisdiction on themselves to determine chieftaincy matters. Both decisions are highly erroneous as they cannot be justified under sections 251 and 254(C) of the Constitution. As will be demonstrated anon, both courts conveniently overruled the judgments of the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal on the subject matter. 

The intervention of the Federal High Court in the dispute arising from the deposition of Emir Ado Bayero & co as well as the restoration of Emir Sanusi Lamido Sanusi is a brazen repudiation of the decision of the Supreme Court in the celebrated case of Tukur v Government of Gongola State (1987) 4 NWLR (117) 517 where it was held that "The question raised in this claim is not a fundamental right question. As in the first prayer, the right to be Emir is not guaranteed by the Fundamental Rights provisions of the Constitution and the Federal High Court has no jurisdiction whatever in the matter. The Court of Appeal was therefore not in error of law to hold that the Federal High Court has no jurisdiction to grant the two reliefs."

Before then the Supreme Court had made it categorically clear in the case of Olaniyi V. Aroyehum (1991) 5 NWLR (Pt. 194) 652 at 660 that the right to be a traditional ruler is not a fundamental right that can be enforced under the provisions of the Nigerian Constitution. Speaking for his judicial brethren, Karibi-White JSC: "I agree entirely with Mr. Otu for the 8th defendant/Respondent that first, plaintiff did not claim that any right of him under chapter III of the Constitution, 1960 was violated. He also did not seek any redress under the chapter. Secondly, chieftaincy is not a matter of Fundamental Rights and cannot be enforced under the provisions of section 31 of the Constitution. It cannot be seriously argued that there is a fundamental right to be a 'Chief'. It is not a human right even though it is a privilege claimed by human beings in an organised society to bring order to their mutual relationship. It is not such right which the law can enforce by virtue merely of the claimant being a human being."

Since the apex court has said that the right to be an Emir is not a fundamental right under chapter four of the Constitution, the Federal High Court sitting in Kano ought to have declined jurisdiction to continue to entertain the dispute over the chieftaincy matter in Kano. In any case, the allegation of infringement of the fundamental rights of the Applicants is an ancillary claim to the substantive reliefs emanating from the deposition and reinstatement of the embattled emirs. 

In FCMB Plc v Nyama (2014) LPELR-23973 AT 19-20, the Court of Appeal held that: “Now it is settled that where an application is made under the fundamental Right (Enforcement Procedure) Rules, a condition precedent to the exercise of the court’s jurisdiction is that the enforcement of fundamental rights of the securing of enforcement thereof should be the main claim and not the accessory claim. Where the main or principal claim is not the enforcement of fundament right, the jurisdiction of thecourt cannot be properly exercised under Fundamental Rights (Enforcement Procedure) Rules."

In the same vein, the National Industrial Court held last week in the case of Jonathan Paragua Zamuna v The Governor of Kaduna State & Anor. (Suit No: NICN/KD/13/2023), that the deposition of the Claimant as a traditional ruler was illegal and ordered his immediate reinstatement. In justifying the jurisdiction of the Court to determine the case, the presiding Judge, Alkali J. held that "the payment of the monthly salary to Jonathan Zamuna upon his appointment as the chief of Piriga Chiefdom or as an officer in the public service of Kaduna State who received salaries from the coffer of the State Government of Kaduna State brings the termination of his appointment to the realm of the jurisdiction of the Court."

I submit, with profound respect, that section 254(C)(1) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 as amended has not conferred jurisdiction on the National Industrial Court to hear and determine chieftaincy matters. Section 254C (1) (k) of the Constitution provides that the National Industrial Court shall have jurisdiction in matters relating to or connected with dispute arising from payment or non-payment of salaries, wages, pensions, gratuities, allowances, benefits and any other entitlement of any employee, worker, political office holder, judicial officer or any civil or public servant in any part of the federation and matters incidental thereto.

The deposition of a traditional ruler cannot by any stretch of imagination be said to be connected with a "dispute arising from the entitlement of an employee, worker, political office holder, judicial officer or any civil or public servant in any part of the federation and matters incidental thereto." The payment of stipend to a traditional ruler by a state government cannot turn him into an employee or a public officer. 

Indeed, the controversy over whether traditional rulers are public officers was laid to rest in the case of Chief John Eze v Okechukwu 2002] 14 SCM 105, where the Supreme Court held that "The definition of 'public officer' in section 277(1) of the 1979 Constitution, which was then applicable, was very wide. Even so, it did not include the office of traditional rulers...Therefore, even if the Appellant had been a traditional ruler, there is nothing that could be relied on to regard him as a public officer and accordingly, I hold that he was not entitled to the pre-action notice under the said section 11(2)."

Since section 277 of the 1979 Constitution and section 318 of the 1999 Constitution are in pari materia, a traditional ruler cannot be said to be a public officer whose removal from office can be challenged at National Industrial Court. In Efa v Efa (2018) 18 WRN the Court of Appeal held that it is apparent that traditional offices do not fall into any of the categories of public service of a state. The Court further held that: "These are not persons who can be held accountable to the high office and demands of a public service of a State and that they are persons versed in traditional matters and whose assignment is to guide the State or Local Government council on such related matters." In the case of Makaan VS. Hangem & Ors. (2018) 32 WRN 47, the Court of Appeal equally held that since traditional rulers are not public officers, the provision of Section 2(a) of the Public Officers Protection Law of Benue State, 2004 have no application in an action involving them.

It ought to be pointed out that the payment of salaries to traditional rulers from the funds of local governments has not conferred jurisdiction on the National Industrial Court. In Bauchi State House of Assembly v Honourable Rifkatu Samson Danna (2017) 49 WRN 82, the appellants contended that the suit challenging the purported suspension of the Respondent was wrongly instituted in the High Court of Bauchi State. As counsel to the Respondent, we submitted that by virtue of section 318 of the Constitution, our client was not staff of the House of Assembly and therefore the National Industrial Court was not competent to determine the case. The Court of Appeal concurred with our submission when it held that "An elected member of a State House of Assembly is not in the "public service of a State." The phrase, means the service of the State and includes service as -(a) clerk or other staff of the House of Assembly." 

However, a traditional ruler who was deposed by a state governor without fair hearing is not without a legal redress. But in challenging deposition or removal from the throne the appropriate court to seek redress is the state high court. In Chief Joseph Odetoye Oyeyemi v Commissioner For Local Govt., Kwara State & Ors. (1992)2 SCNJ 266, the appellant sued the defendant at the Kwara State High Court where he challenged the withdrawal of his recognition as the Bale of Oro without affording him the right to make a representation. He won at the High Court and lost at the Court of Appeal.

 In the further appeal to the Supreme Court, the judgment of the Court of Appeal was set aside while that of the trial court was restored. It was held by the apex court that the withdrawal of the recognition of appellant was illegal on the ground that he was not accorded the right of a fair hearing enshrined in section 33 of the 1979 Constitution. Consequently, the court ordered his reinstatement and payment of his outstanding arrears of salaries and allowances by the Kwara State Government. 

The summary of the existing judicial authorities is that the Federal High Court lacks the jurisdictional competence to entertain any matter pertaining to the deposition of a traditional ruler unless the complaint is limited to his banishment or detention. In Sanusi Lamido Sanusi v Attorney-General of Kano State & Ors (Suit No: FHC/ABJ/CS/357/2020) the Federal High Court declared illegal and unconstitutional the banishment of the Applicant to Nasarawa State by the Governor of Kano State. The Court also ordered the immediate release of the Applicant from illegal custody and reparation of N10 million. 

In conclusion, judges and lawyers should realise that disputes arising from chieftaincy and other local matters are within the exclusive jurisdiction of the High Court of each state of the Federation notwithstanding that the country is operating a distorted federal arrangement. Therefore, having regards to the facts and circumstances of the controversial decisions of the Federal High Court and National Industrial Court on the status of traditional rulers in Kano State, it is pertinent to draw the attention of judges to the case of Tukur v Government of Gongola State (supra) where Otutu Obaseki JSC (of blessed memory) cautioned that “Courts in this country, without exception, have no power to prescribe jurisdiction for themselves. Neither do they have power to expand or reduce their area of jurisdiction.”