The Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Abimbola Akeem Owoade 1, has called for the urgent integration of traditional institutions and native intelligence into Nigeria’s National Counter-Terrorism Strategy as a necessary component of a holistic approach to address the country’s complex security challenges.

Oba Owoade emphasised that unless development challenges are seriously addressed through genuinely people-oriented development ethos and strategy, it would be difficult to root out terrorism in the country.

Alaafin stated that traditional rulers and native intelligence are crucial, yet often underutilised, assets in Nigeria’s counter-terrorism efforts, primarily through community engagement and intelligence gathering.

The monarch made these remarks while addressing the combined security forces, including the Police, Civil Defence Corps personnel, Amotekun corps, and some local security outfits he established to prevent bandit infiltration in the villages and forests within the vicinity of the metropolis and Oke Ogun areas, and to flush them out.

According to him, “their deep local roots and implicit trust among the populace enable them to access information and foster cooperation that state security agencies often struggle to achieve.

“Traditional rulers are well-positioned at the grassroots level to gather “native intelligence” (human intelligence) on the entry and exit of unknown persons, suspicious activities, and potential threats.

“Native intelligence complements formal intelligence mechanisms by providing crucial local context, knowledge of the terrain, and insight into local customs and nuances, which is vital for effective counter-terrorism operations”.

He pointed out that it is important for government to take holistic view on information gathering as a system for addressing insecurity, adding that it must take into consideration the need to harmonise the roles of law enforcement and security agencies and the need to deploy technologies required for
identification of criminal suspect.

“Nigeria is not the only country facing security challenges today. The fundamental thing is how you deal with these challenges. We can sustain national security operations or options by using native intelligence gathering as a response to national security threat.

“The Old Oyo Empire lasted more than 600 years because of effective native internal security. Three quarter of the universe is in a state of unrest due to lack of effective internal security.

“Though the country is abundantly resourced and has progressively witnessed phenomenal growth over the years. lt is incontrovertible that there has been a patent increase in the manifestation of the absence of real development, in terms of the quality of social existence and of social relations of majority of the populace”, the Alaafin said.