More than a year after former President Goodluck Jonathan convened the national conference between March and June 2014, public apprehension is that the report may be dumped like other national records. Correspondent Sam Nwokoro reports.
Right from the inception of Nigeria’s nationhood in 1960, the problem of unity of the disparate ethnicities coupled together by Britain has been recurrent.
Nigeria comprises over 250 languages, and this diversity of tribes and tongues is partly responsible for its underdevelopment.
Various military regimes have designed all sorts of political architecture, including the creation of states, to smoothen ethnic and tribal differences and ingrain a value system. But this has not achieved anything.
State creation led to more allegations of marginalisation by segments of the country which complain that fiscal formula and fiscal federalism shortchange them in getting what is rightfully theirs in the distribution of national resources.
The inadequacies in the Constitution bred many military interventions and retarded true and functional democratic institutions.
The absence of true federalism and democratic practices makes it impossible to unite differences in value orientations, worldviews, languages, cultures, and even physical and environmental characteristics and developmental aspirations of this myriad of nationalities.
This was chiefly why Jonathan inaugurated a national conference which clamour predated his assumption of office in 2010. The campaign had begun soon after the quagmire created by the annulled presidential election of 1993 which nearly led to the disintegration of the country.
But the general election in 1999 was arranged just to ease the tension.
The 1999 Constitution did not solve Nigeria’s structural problems. Instead, democracy propelled by the inadequacies of the Constitution upon which it was running revealed the many fault lines of the country.
But why has the report not been considered? Why would President Muhammadu Buhari who came to power on the slogan of “change” keep quiet over the conference report?
Is there any harm in reshaping Nigeria like a modern day nation that runs like tiger on the lane of economic development than reel like a slow-motion snake?
What are the fear, and who and who are hindering the implementing the recommendations of the conference? What advantage has the report for Nigeria’s good and what risk if ignored?
Disturbing mum
Buhari has not made any comment about the national conference since his assumption of office.
Whereas he has carpeted much of Jonathan’s actions while in office, he hardly has expressed any opinion over the national conference report.
Public anticipation was that Buhari would commence his policy works based on the recommendations of the report.
But he started off from the same old pattern of governance notorious of Nigerian leaders since independence – fish out the shortcomings, real or imaginary of the previous administration, exaggerate and politicise them, brush them aside, and start afresh.
Earlier this year, a national daily wrote in an editorial: “More than two months after the inauguration of his presidency, Buhari’s silence on the position of his government to an exercise that cost the nation close to N10 billion has spurred sustained pressures to make him make a public declaration on the issue.
“Most Nigerians see his silence as injurious to the political health of the nation. This is particularly against the backdrop of the strident opposition mounted by Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), the North’s foremost socio-cultural group.
“Recently, the group’s National Publicity Secretary, Muhammadu Ibrahim, in a statement issued in Kaduna, said Buhari would not implement the confab recommendations because doing so would further underdevelop a region already economically disadvantaged”, noted an editorial posted by a prominent national daily.
Implementation of the report has polarised the nation along the North-South divide, with the North opposed to it and the South rooting for it.
Buhari may not be disposed to the implementation of the report of an exercise his All Progressives Congress (APC) shunned, alleging that Jonathan sprung on Nigerians as part of his strategy to win re-election.
This tends to be the general perception, and the Presidency seems not interested in clearing the air.
The editorial added: “This newspaper calls on all stakeholders to maintain an open mind in deciding the utility value of the report.
“Buhari might hold both the yam and the knife on the issue, but what he eventually decides will attest to the quality of his statecraft.”
Compelling features
Recent events are vindicating the convocation of the confab. The country is not in a war situation but social temperature is rising, regardless of Buhari’s measured steps in addressing them.
The dust thrown up by his political appointees is yet to douse, with various sections complaining being shortchanged.
Allegations that political and bureaucratic power has slipped back to the North seem to have been engraved in the minds of most Southerners.
The usual nationalist campaigns for separate nation-state have been dominating headlines with the usual security clampdowns and protests by the agitators.
Online portals and blogs express unhappiness against the Nigerian state by sections of Nigerians abroad.
Even itinerant cattle rearers cause problems with their flocks in parts of the South, splitting hairs and raising social temperature.
There is anxiety over plans to probe the Jonathan administration. Even though no prosecution of his former lieutenants has been recorded, the mere mention of his name around graft elicits suspicion of witch-hunt.
Emmanuel Asiwe, a human rights activist, said the probe of Jonathan’s government “is an exercise that ought to be handled with utmost care, and not for just the sake of probe because he who comes to equity to seek justice must first and foremost come with clean hands.
“Corruption in Nigeria has a lot of foreign components and I believe everybody knows that, and it did not start with the Jonathan government.”
Any harm in reshaping Nigeria?
Nigerians believe that restructuring the country is essential for good governance and to reduce the cost of governance and bureaucracy.
A delegate to the confab, Senator Femi Okoroumu, argued that “those of us who believed only … Jonathan was committed to implementing the resolutions of the conference made it clear before the election that if Buhari won, that would be the end of the recommendations of the conference.
“We predicted this and shouted from the rooftops. But the people knew better and they have chosen him. So I am not surprised that he is not keen on implementing the resolutions.
“We support all the measures taken by Buhari so far, like the war on corruption. But we believe that if we implement the report of the national confab, the tendency towards corruption will reduce permanently.”
The secretary of Afenifere Renewal Group told TheNiche that “part of the issues in the war against terror is also dependent on nationhood, the fault lines and the clash of civilisations.
“We made sufficient recommendations at the conference that could stem extremism.
“In the area of insurgency, there were different parts.
“There was the question of maintaining law and order, question of combating the ideology that gave birth to this extremism and fundamentalism, and more importantly, we touched on the issue of restructuring the areas that were devastated.
“Education is important as well as ensuring that there is no breeding ground for extremism.”
Fear of confab report
Fears over the report of the confab brewed even before the deliberation started.
One half of the country, the largely Muslim North, wanted the centrist structure of 36 states maintained. Some participants like ACF did not want anything resembling restructure, whether geographically or fiscally, discussed.
However, they did not find such extreme positions saleable before Nigerians and the outside world who were benumbed by the insurgency of the fundamentalist Islamic sect, Boko Haram.
The conference report only touched on everyday concerns: the role of councils, abolition of contentious provisions in current laws, taxation, et cetera.
But those fundamental structural problems were not addressed.
Another source of fear for the constitutional reform is the proverbial fear that it may lead to a break up of Nigeria if those fundamental issues were addressed.
Dozie Ikedife, who attended the confab, said “though the conference did not address most of the contentious issues Nigerians had expected, such things as form of government and regionalism, it did make provisions for more states and gave a lacuna for people who wished to align themselves in more perfect nationality within the context of Nigerian sovereignty to do so.”
Most Nigerians agreed with most of the recommendations but the fact that the confab did not make explicit pronouncements on them, especially on subjecting the recommendations to a referendum, continues to agitate the minds of many.
The promised reduction in federal political offices is not about to take place as ministers will swell the ranks.
The promised cut in the emoluments of political office holders is yet to be seen, even as there are reports that National Assembly (NASS) committees have been increased in both Chambers, implying more funds would be spent.
Asiwe described it as “the more you look, the less you see. What the increased membership means is that more money would be demanded at every turn for parliamentary works such as probes.
“It involves overhead cost of running the Chambers and wipes whatever has been said to be the cut in political office holders pay.”
Another source of fear about visiting the conference report is the push by some sections of the country for resource control and true federalism.
Most of the key members of the APC are agitators for true federalism. But there is cynicism if the government at the centre will attempt that, judging by the body language of Buhari.
“There is little they could to force Buhari to implement the confab report. I don’t see him or his APC or Bola Tinubu and co forcing him to do that, not the least revisit the report of the confab,” said Charles Ude, former chieftain of Anambra Amalgamated Traders Association.
“They are already benefitting from the lull. Tinubu owns Oando, him and his brother and their Hausa network.
“They have bought oil blocks offshore and on shore, and now are even planning to lay pipe all the way from the Niger Delta creek to the Lagos lagoon at no price or charge whatsoever, not even with the environmental impact management agreement in the communities which own the crude oil and gas in Niger Delta.
“So how can they come around and start talking about conference report and true federalism. They never meant what they were saying all the while.”
Constitutional lawyer, Itsay Sagay, said in a lecture prelude to the conference: “In order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare and secure the blessing of liberty for ourselves and our posterity, we as Nigerians of various nationalities, culture, historical, economic and social background of the Niger Delta will participate in producing and proclaiming a just and stable constitution for the Fed3eral Republic of Nigeria.”
Conference recommendations
The recommendations of the conference include creation of more states to bring the number to 50, removal of the immunity clause that protects public officers in the Constitution, increased revenue derivation allocation to oil bearing states, removal of councils, independent candidacy, special court to handle corruption, and amendment of the land tenure system.
Odua People’s Congress leader, Gani Adams, said “the confab report is surest way of solving all of Nigeria’s problems. All these things the present government is doing now are just like dancing round the circle.”
Risk of relegation
Henry Nwagbara, who teaches philosophy at a university in the South West (which he did not disclose for security reasons), said “there is not going to be much change from the governance method of the APC-led federal government more than we have had.
“The nature of Buhari’s appointments confirms that. But that will be costly, considering there is not going to be enough money in the economy to fulfill most of those free this, free that promises Buhari made prior to elections.
“Beside, as oil prices fall further, he would have to yield to removing the petrol subsidy as his predecessor had planned before his exit. So how does amount to change.
“The best I still believe is for the government to begin earnest implementation of the national conference report, especially as it relates to political restructuring and the practice of true federalism.”
Asked whether Buhari is likely to visit the conference report, his Media Assistant, Femi Adesina, replied: “When the time comes there would be a public announcement.”
