The Council of Traditional Rulers in the South East has appealed to President Bola Tinubu to consider the request for creation of additional two states in the zone.
Speaking at the Forum of News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja, Chairman of the Council, Igwe Samuel Asadu, said the request was part of decision reached by the council at its last meeting.
According to him, the request for additional two states is to address the imbalance in state creation, as the south east zone had only five states.
He said: ‘at a meeting, which was well attended by the traditional rulers in the zone, we agreed that we will accept any state creation from any part of the eastern states.
‘We are united in this struggle. We have five states in south east, so we need to have two more states to be even.
‘But whatever we get, we thank the president. We are at his mercy and God bless him for that.
‘So when the state is given to us, we will endorse it. It does not matter where it comes from, it does not matter whose lawmaker spon
sored the bill.’
On the clamour for constitutional roles for the traditional institutions, Asadu said: ‘we want to have some constitutional relevance, some constitutional powers.
‘ Our monthly release of five per cent of the local government allocation to traditional rulers in the state have not been given by state governments.
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‘Traditional rulers play an important role in communicating government policies and programmes to members of the community,,’ he said.
Source: News Agency of Nigeria