Like a soldier that has just returned from the war front, I was
engaged in the past-time of admiring what looked like a 'war trophy' that is a colorfully
made 1,148 page book I recently bought in Enugu during my recent trip to the
South East for some speaking engagements at the behest of the Revenue
Mobilization Allocation and Fiscal Commission.
It was therefore in that convivial atmosphere that I glanced
through it and read what Marcus T. Cicero once said that; “I shall always
consider the best guesser the best prophet”.
Ironically, this pleasant discovery of a wise saying was made by
me approximately twenty four hours after the 2013 Independence
Day national broadcast by President Goodluck Jonathan in which among other
things he promised to convoke a national conference.
Putting President Jonathan political promise to organize a
national conference side by side with what I have just discovered from the
book titled “World famous quotations”, compiled by R. N.
Munshi, in which I encountered the above mentioned quotation by Marcus T.
Cicero, then it could rightly be said to be a worthy trophy.
Importantly, Marcus Cicero's wise saying as encapsulated in the
book aforementioned spurred me on to further ruminate on the recent scholarly
work of the late Professor Chinua Achebe titled “there was a country: a
personal story of the Nigeria – Biafra war” in which he masterfully
sketched Nigeria’s political firmament as a huge circus stage whereby the
players are adept at unleashing series of jokes all aimed at grand deception.
The thought therefore flashed in my mind that Professor Achebe
will for all times occupy the center stage of our intellectual debate as one of
the finest prophets who devoted substantial segment of his meritorious life to
show Nigerians the light which if we follow those prescriptions with devotion,
then the sky they say is our limit.
It was my reflection on the just unveiled determinations of the
current federal government to organize a national conference that makes good
the belief by Professor Achebe that Nigerian contemporary political rulers are
masters of deception and deceits. The contents of the Independence Day national
broadcast by President Jonathan therefore is a true reflection of the saying
that Nigerians are still dancing around our fundamental challenges and are
largely unwilling and lacked the will power to do the needful to take Nigeria
to the much talked about Promised Land.
In the national broadcast aptly titled: “We have a duty to put
Nigeria first”, President Jonathan who is on record as the first doctorate
degree holder to have mounted the highest political office in Nigeria said his
administration has listened to the groundswell of agitation for the convocation
of a national conference and has thus decided to do just that .
His words: “Fellow Nigerians, our Administration has taken
cognizance of suggestions over the years by well-meaning Nigerians on the need
for a National Dialogue on the future of our beloved country. I am an advocate
of dialogue. When there are issues that stoke tension and bring about friction,
it makes perfect sense for the interested parties to come together to discuss.”
President Jonathan further offered reason for his type of national
conference thus; “In demonstration of my avowed belief in the positive power of
dialogue in charting the way forward, I have decided to set up an Advisory
Committee whose mandate is to establish the modalities for a National Dialogue
or Conference. The Committee will also design a framework and come up with
recommendations as to the form, stricture, and mechanism of the process.”
True to the peculiar expectation of disappointed Nigerians, the
current administration followed the already notorious module practiced by his
discredited predecessors in office by appointing same old foxes that have
actively participated in the under-development of Nigeria to form the core of
the people to work out mechanisms for the convocation of the Jonathan's brand
of national conference.
"The Committee will be chaired by Dr. Femi Okurounmu while
Dr. Akilu Indabawa will serve as the Secretary. The full membership of the
Committee will be announced shortly. I expect the Report to be ready in one
month, following which the nation will be briefed on the nomenclature,
structure” and modalities of the Dialogue”, he
stated.
Laudable as the above decision may seem on the surface, deep
inside the mind of the current government, just like past administrations, the
national conference will definitely be choreographed to achieve a
pre-determined agenda which substantially will not fundamentally alter or
tinker with the faulty foundation on which Nigeria’s formation was laid by the
British Colonial over-lords both in 1914 (amalgamation of North and South
protectorates) and the October 1st 1960’s declaration of political Independence
from Great Britain.
To be fair to Jonathan; it is unlikely that a contemporary
Nigerian political office holder deeply entrenched in the merry-go-round of
spoils of political office could supervise the eventual demolition of the
structures that enables the political elites to continue to hold Nigerians as
hostages.
That said, it is also not impossible to find a person with the
patriotic zeal to lead the crusade for Nigerians to democratically decide
whether to continue to remain as one united political entity or for the
component parts to go their separate ways.
This writer is not one of those in support of the national
conference as contemplated by President Jonathan.
I support the convocation of a national conference with all the
sovereign power to so determine the final fate of Nigeria. I believe that power
and sovereignty belongs to the people of Nigeria from where government
officials derive their authority and legitimacy and so there is nothing wrong
in the owners of the sovereignty to so decide to fashion out ways, means and
strategies of our co-existence.
The national conference being contemplated by the current
political administration in Abuja will be spearheaded by the same old dramatis
personae who ruined Nigeria and as the saying goes it will be “garbage in,
garbage out”.
The talk shop would be choreographed to gulp huge public fund in meaningless
monologue that wouldn’t be far-reaching enough as to determine once and for all
the future of Nigeria’s diverse nationalities in view of the fact that the
hurriedly packaged amalgamation of 1914 by the British Colonial over-lords is
no longer sustainable and was indeed ab initio, a calculated mischief to
perpetuate inequities and injustices and the Jonathan's national conference is
an attempt to assuage the agitation for the convocation of a sovereign national
conference which has been roundly rejected by all the forces in the legislature
and the executive arms of government who are neck deep in the destruction of
Nigeria’s Commonwealth and Patrimony.
From 1999 till date, different leaders of ethnic nationalities and
civil society stakeholders have always called for the convocation of sovereign
national conference so Nigerians can peacefully and peaceably determine their
future in compliance with international humanitarian laws.
Part one Article one of the international covenant on economic,
social and cultural rights provides thus; “All People have the right of
self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their
political status and freely pursue their economic; cultural and social development”.
Besides, Nigerians ought to pursue meaningful activities that will
inevitably promote their collective right to development as members of the
global village.
The right to development, according to those who know, places the
human person at the centre of the development process and recognizes that the
human being should be the main participant and beneficiary of development.
By and large, the convocation of a sovereign national conference
would have permitted Nigerians the opportunity of not just self determination
politically speaking, but would have become an avenue for pulling Nigeria and
Nigerians away from the heavy weight of mass poverty and the other
institutionalized inequities and injustices that have combined to make Nigeria
a poor nation even when the country is endowed with abundant human and material
resources. Sovereign national conference would have addressed the situation
whereby states in the North treat a particular religion as state religion as
against section 10 of the constitution therefore allowing fanatics and
extremists to unleash violence against adherents of other religions other
than theirs.
Now that the current powers-that-be has chosen the charade and
gambit of a national Conference, it may not be out of place to suggest some
basic agenda for the delegates.
To a lot of Nigerians, the widespread cases of impunity and break
down of law and order characterized by unprecedented violence and organized
crimes therefore makes it imperative that the nation’s policing system must be
reformed and transformed and the need to create state and local police has
become even more imperative.
Besides, the justice delivery system in Nigeria is skewed in
favour of the rich even as corruption has taken the better part of the nation’s
judiciary.
The National Conference should devote time to understudy why the
two anti-graft bodies set up over one decade ago have failed to check the
rampaging incidence of widespread corruption and economic crimes among
political office holders and their surrogates.
The National Conference delegates must also address the corrupt
electoral system in Nigeria with a view to suggesting strategies for making the
electoral panels at all levels Independent and transparent because if the 2015
general election is perceived to be manipulated to favour the powers-that –be,
then we can begin to sing nunc dimittis to Nigeria.
* Emmanuel Onwubiko; Heads; Human Rights
Writers Association of Nigeria; blogs@www.huriwa.blogspot.com; www.huriwa.org.
3/10/2013.
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