In a modern society, culture must never be forgotten thrown into the dustbin of time. Common sense demands that we use such flawless opportunity to create avenues that inspires trust and unity. Most of us would prefer the traditional nomenclature to modern jargons. However, the evolving state brings to fore the beauty of constitution and convention as an avenue to install law and order while ensuring that unity and peace reigns.
The Technology Industry is a marketplace. We invent, innovate, buy and sell. We develop strategies that would ensure that our products and services are relevant for demand and supply. Such Marketing demands organisational structures; Accountant, President, Secretary, Chairman, Director, etc. This are all position to maintain the market and profits. What baffles minds in the Technology Community is the current installation of the Babaloja and the Iyaloja of Computer Village. Soon, they will come for the Bankers Community, Insurance Forum, Building Society, GSM Village, etc.
What is the gain of a market that is divided? What is the marketing value of creating a parallel structure under the assumption of order? What is the political strength of culture competing with modern constituted structures when it can be symbiotic in nature? Who benefits from the ensuing disorder?
It is our belief that those in irrelevant places of authorities are not aware. We do not want to assume that silence means consent. While they wait, the Nigerian Society of Engineers or its Builders counterpart should have a Babaloja and Iyaloja installed to curtail the many building collapsing in Lagos State. We have had quite a handful latterly, losing Mothers and Children, Fathers not excluded in the process. We need the proposed action to maintain peace. The Nigerian Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) should be next in line. We have so many scuffles based on accounting and transparency daily. Besides, its better to install one for all registered organisation that deals with any form of marketing in the South West, the jurisdiction where such titles can be traced.
If we agree that convention gives right to the average head of a custodian of culture on market places, what role does the constitution plays? It begs for response. While it can work side by side based on the positives, it should never be made to work above registered and constituted bodies. The President of the Federation does not seat in council with Royalty to affirm directives but in consultation, when he chooses. State Governors do not present their woes to Kings and Chiefs to assent their proposals but inform and seek support for implementation. Why should enabling bodies to be subsumed otherwise?
The Computer Village is an Internationally Acclaimed Market that deals in modern commodities that defy boundaries. Recall that the need for such officers was to check, inspect and accept the goods and services that comes within its sovereign ground, thus ensuring the regulation in prices and royalties to the king for community growth and development. Thus, bringing culture to meet modern approach to government could have been better tackled. The official job of the Babaloja and Iyaloja has evolved into Immigration Services, Inland Revenue Services, etc. To function, the Custodian of Culture must accept that certain roles will no longer be under their purview. It would be a constitutional breach.
Creating such office without proper consultation seems out-of-order. Who was called to the roundtable within that community for deliberation before action? The Oba of Lagos, Governor of Lagos, Local Government Chairman, Political Chieftains, or the average entrepreneur in the community? It begs for response. In seeking, such consultation allows for ease of action, relevance of action and creates the order seamlessly. What we have in the Computer Village today is out-of-order. It can breed nothing good but division, chaos and a dispensation of ruthless disorderliness; it played out on installation day.
Should it not be reversed? It can be reversed but not destroyed. To make amends, the roles of this custodian must be clearly defined and must not conflict with the Constitutional rights or registration Acts of the Nation. Our mistakes must not be embellished into a right, otherwise, we would have laid an antecedent that may come to spite us in the coming future. Once it becomes a precedent, we are doomed.
Local Content is not a product of political gimmick; it’s a result of collaborative partnership sustaining order. The world is watching…
Ap. Akinbo A. A. Cornerstone
Otunba Local Content
