After four months of deliberations, the national conference will finally close shop on July 17. That is 11 days from now.
After guzzling billions of naira – each of the 492 delegates is paid N1.4 million allowance a week – the jury will soon be out on whether it was tax payers’ money well spent.
My hunch is that the post-conference debate will be fiercer than the one that preceded the inauguration of the conference by President Goodluck Jonathan on March 17.
The pre-conference debate concentrated on Jonathan’s motive – did he want to use the conference as a smokescreen for tenure elongation as former President Olusegun Obasanjo tried to do in 2005? Does he have the power to convene such a conference without a law enacted by the National Assembly (NASS)? How would the delegates emerge? Can Nigerians sit down in one room and talk to each other?
Now that the conference was successfully inaugurated and also will, in a matter of days, come to a “glorious” end, another question is, what next?
Many had thought the conference would collapse under the enormous weight of Nigeria’s contradictions. Apprehension was high that deliberations would end in a deadlock, as happened in Obasanjo’s conference. But this confab is poised to be a roaring success.
Except for initial disagreements on voting process and the puerile threat by the Lamido of Adamawa to take his people to Cameroon, debates were good tempered. Rather than a zero-sum game, consensus, which engendered a win-win situation on most issues, became the rule.
As a delegate, Colonel Tony Nyiam (rtd), told The Niche, “So far, we all came from different parts of the country with different mind-sets, at times, somehow opinionated but as time went on, these mind-sets started giving way to what I will call common sense, and later, the love of humanity as people of Nigeria.
“So far the conference is going well and we do hope that, at the end of the day, we will disappoint those who think that the conference will be a failure because really we have no choice but to come up with a long term framework with which we can restore Nigeria to a governance system of equity, justice and fairness.”
That is exactly what the conference has done. How the delegates managed to build consensus on very divisive issues that usually accentuate the country’s fault lines will dominate public discourse for a long time. Decisions on removal of immunity clause from the Constitution, stopping state sponsorship of pilgrimage, and establishment of state police are all fundamental. They may not cure the country’s numerous ills, but the courage to take those decisions signposts an uncommon determination by the delegates to move Nigeria forward.
Most profound were agreements reached on the report of the Committee on Political Restructuring and Forms of Government, co-chaired by General Ike Nwachukwu (rtd) and Hon Mohammed Kumalia.
The committee examined the structure and forms of government against the backdrop of the peculiar circumstances of the country’s multi-ethnic setting, as well as the challenges and the need to lay a solid foundation for an all-inclusive and cost-effective system of government that would serve the best interest of Nigeria and Nigerians.
A delegate disclosed that the reports of the committee and that of Committee on Devolution of Powers deliberately kept by the conference leadership as the last to be debated because of fear that the recommendations might divide the house. But it was presented on Tuesday and robustly debated on Wednesday before delegates voted on Thursday. It became a soothing balm.
Imagine 492 Nigerians unanimously approving the creation of an additional state for the South East, “in the spirit of reconciliation, equity and justice.” When the decision was taken, the hall erupted in celebration.
It does not really matter when the additional state will be created but the fact that other Nigerians have finally acknowledged that a great injustice has been done the South East is heart-warming. Out of the six geo-political zones, only the South East has five states. All the others have six, except the North West which has seven.
Delegates also resolved that the office of President shall rotate between the North and South and revolve among the six zones. The office of governor shall also be rotated among the three senatorial districts in each state.
A statement issued by the confab after the votes were taken said: “Where the president dies in office, is incapacitated, impeached or where he resigns, conference agreed that the vice president shall operate in acting capacity for a period of 90 days during which an election to the same office would be conducted.
“This decision was taken because each zone is expected to run the full course of the constitutionally allowed tenure without undue disruption; and it was also agreed that based on the adopted zoning formula, when a president leaves under any of the circumstances stated above, another president would be elected from the same zone where the previous one came from.
“Conference also voted in favour of Modified Presidential system of Government described as a home-made model of government that combines the attributes of parliamentary and presidential systems.
“The concept is believed to have the potentials of entrenching the principle of separation of powers as practised in presidential system and promotion of co-operation and harmony between executive and the legislature as operated under the parliamentary system.
“The president elected under the new system shall exercise full responsibility for his government and shall select ministers, not more than 18 of them, from the six geo-political zones of the country.
All these are weighty decisions that will address some of the ills that bedevil our country.
Decisions reached on fiscal federalism, two-tier government (federal and states) and making the creation of local governments the responsibility of the states are equally monumental.
The conference agreed to confer financial autonomy on state Houses of Assembly to free them from direct control by the executive, and that each state should have its own Constitution, subordinated to the federal Constitution.
These are fundamental decisions. The delegates did not play politics with Nigeria’s future. If these decisions form the basis of a new Constitution, then the imbalance in the structure of the Nigerian state may have been corrected. Enthronement of equity and justice will pull Nigeria back from the brink. But will that happen?
When the delegates depart Abuja on July 17, leaving their leadership to hand over the report to Jonathan, the question Nigerians should ask is, what next?
All these recommendations are not worth more than the paper on which they are written until the NASS adopts them in a Constitution amendment process or Nigerians adopt them in a referendum.
The snag is that many Nigerians don’t believe the NASS has the political will to do the needful. Also, the 1999 Constitution has no clause for a referendum.
Confab delegates have proved the sceptics wrong. But the battle ahead may be tougher.
Editor’s note: This piece was first published last week but repeated to coincide with the winding up of the Confab this week.
