Four days to the conclusion of debates at the national conference, Editor, Politics/Features, EMEKA ALEX DURU, raises issues on what happens with the outcome of its deliberations…
By the time deliberations at the national conference wind up on Thursday, July 17, some far-reaching landmarks would have been attained, proponents have argued. In a way, their position is not without facts.
Confab delegates
Not many, for instance, had given the confab any chance of even taking off. In fact, by the time President Goodluck Jonathan mooted a national conference in his October 1 broadcast last year, the initiative was greeted with mixed feelings.
The president, in his speech, had remarkably recalled that for many years, Nigerians had craved to talk on how the different components of the country could co-exist on a mutually-acceptable term.
The desire, he stated, was borne out of the realisation that the 1914 amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Protectorates to form Nigeria did not have the input of the people involved in the union, hence the mutual distrust that has often threatened the nation’s unity.
Many, thus, saw in the announcement possible attainment of a project that had long been thwarted by successive administrations in the land.
Incidentally, past administrations had avoided open engagements on the issues involved, fearing that allowing discussions on such areas might lead to dismemberment of the country. Even when apparently selling a dummy to the people, they had put up impressions of convoking national conferences of whatever guises, such gatherings had ended up being mere talk shops. This was mainly on account of absence of legal or legislative instruments backing the outcome of the proceedings of the meetings.
It was against this backdrop that when this latest attempt was announced by Jonathan, it was greeted with measured optimism.
Taking the bull by the horn
The president, however, went ahead to appoint Senator Femi Okurounmu, a frontline Yoruba leader, as chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee (PAC) which guided the government on the modalities for the convocation of the conference.
At the inauguration of the confab on March 17, he stated the principles behind it. “Our sole motivation for convening this conference is the patriotic desire for a better and greater nation. We are determined that things must be done in a way and manner that will positively advance that objective.”
Over 35 issues were pencilled down for deliberation. They included the political restructuring of the country, forms of domestic governance, good governance, judicature/judicial system, democratisation, political parties, challenges of internal democracy, national security and security challenges, state creation and merger of states, education, health, science, technology and development, restoring national ethics, morals and core values.
There were also issues of religion, secularism and the secularity of the Nigerian state, agriculture, food security and rural development, the environment, defence, tenure of public officials: president, governors, etc.
Delivering on targets
Even with the inauguration of the confab, controversies surrounding it persisted. The initial worry was on the mode of arriving at decisions. The prescription from the presidency was that resolutions should be arrived at on basis of consensus or 75 per cent of the delegates. When that appeared unrealistic, the delegates settled for consensus or 70 per cent. With what seemed the initial obstacle cleared, confab members went to work. Even at that, there were fears by many that the conference would collapse under the enormous weight of Nigeria’s contradictions. Apprehension was particularly high that deliberations would deadlock.
Except for initial disagreements on voting process, debates were good -tempered. Col. Tony Nyiam (rtd), a delegate, told TheNiche how they got their acts together: “We all came from different parts of the country with different mindsets, at times, somehow opinionated; but as time went on, these mindsets started giving way to what I would call commonsense, 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.”
Not even critics of the confab would fault his submission. What baffled many was how the delegates managed to build consensus on very divisive issues that usually triggered conflicts among the citizens.
Some of the major achievements of the delegates were decisions on removal of immunity clause from the constitution, stopping state sponsorship of pilgrimages, and establishment of state police.
The 492 delegates also approved the creation of an additional state for the South East, “in the spirit of reconciliation, equity and justice”. This particular decision, our reporter learnt, sent the confab members on wild jubilation. Out of the six geo-political zones, only the South East has five states. Others have six, except the North West which has seven. Analysts note that even when it is not certain whether the additional state will be created given the contradictions in the land, the fact that other Nigerians have finally acknowledged that a great injustice has been done the South East remains a major achievement of the confab.
Mike Ahamba, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) and confab delegate, particularly counts that feat as a breakthrough.
“At least, l have not seen anybody who says that South East should not get an extra state. That is a major breakthrough. If we go from here with consensus that a new state should be specifically created for the South East to bring it at par with the other zones, I think that is a major breakthrough,” he told TheNiche in an interview.
Aside the bold intervention on creation of additional states, delegates also resolved that the office of the president shall rotate between the North and South and revolve among the six zones. Before now, the narrow interpretation by political players had been the presidency rotating between the North and South with discomforting silence on the position revolving among the zones. It was equally agreed that the office of governor shall be rotated among the three senatorial districts in each state.
The confab’s decisions on fiscal federalism, adoption of two-tier government, comprising federal and states and making the creation of local governments the responsibility of the states were also considered exciting.
Similar ululation trailed their agreements on conferring financial autonomy on Houses of Assembly to free them from direct control by the executive, as well as the recommendation that each state should have its own constitution, subordinated to the federal constitution.
What happens next?
After four months of deliberations, the conference will finally close shop four days from now.
But even with the brilliant outing by the delegates, a major concern of informed analysts is what would happen to the outcome of the deliberations at the end of the day. This fear, observers insist, is hardly misplaced, going by past experiences.
In 1994, for instance, the administration of the late General Sani Abacha had contrived a Constitution Conference to discuss the Nigeria Project and strengthen the perceived grey areas of the 1979 Constitution.
Curiously, Abacha restricted the delegates to the confab from discussing the twin issues of Nigeria’s unity and her federal arrangement.
While the administration expended fortunes in organising the debate, it was clear to informed analysts that there were no genuine intentions by the conveners to discuss the real issues confronting the nation. In the process, the very issues that had led to agitations for sovereign national conference were utterly scaled down or skipped outright from the agenda.
The preceding General Ibrahim Babangida administration had engaged in similar obvious wild goose chase, aimed at deceiving Nigerians.
But perhaps, the most bizarre of the contraptions was the former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s National Political Reform Conference (NPRC), which the government claimed was mandated to “reassess, refocus, redefine and redesign (the country’s) political landscape in a direction that would strengthen the bonds of unity, enhance the processes of democratic consolidation, and strengthen the structures, to solidify those values that promote democracy, good governance and good neighbourliness.”
Coming under a civilian dispensation, though after initial reluctance from Obasanjo, the conference held and the talks went on for as long as it lasted. But at the end of the day, it was no better than the Abacha experience.
By the time the talk shop was disbanded in hazy circumstances, nothing of substance was achieved. In fact, there were insinuations that Obasanjo merely put up the body as a strategy in going about his ill-fated tenure elongation project.
While the conference closes shop, perceptive Nigerians have started raising genuine concern on what becomes the outcome of its deliberations.
Dr. Obiora Okonkwo, President and Founder, Nigeria/Belgium Business Forum (NBBF) and Board Member of the National Metallurgical Development Centre, Jos, notes, for instance, that great deal depends on what Nigerian leaders choose to do with the recommendations of the delegates.
Okonkwo, a political scientist said: “The major challenge is what we do with the outcome of the conference. Will the leaders really work with the recommendations or will they be manipulated to suit the needs of individuals who are positioning themselves to benefit from the system?”
A vote for referendum
It is against this background that apprehensive Nigerians have insisted that the outcome of the conference be subjected to a referendum. The president had, at the inauguration of the confab, incidentally made allusions on this direction.
Dr. Sylvan Ebigwei, former President-General of Aka-Ikenga, an Igbo intellectual think tank, argues strongly that the outcome of the confab deliberations should be subjected to a referendum for Nigerians to decide whether it would constitute the fulcrum of a new constitution that many have been yearning for.
“After the confab, we are not expecting anything less than a referendum. All the decisions of confab should go for a referendum and the outcome of the referendum must be adopted. After the referendum, the National Assembly should pass it as it is, as anything outside that will bring chaos to this nation,” he told TheNiche.
Even with the strong demand by Nigerians for a referendum to determine the fate of confab outcomes, there are fears that it may be a tall order to attain that desire. Experts in Law have, for example, raised fears that resolutions of the conference may not be implemented if the constitution does not provide for a referendum. They have, in fact, observed that there was no provision for referendum in the 1999 Constitution.
Apparently on account of this, Senate Leader, Victor Ndoma-Egba, had earlier in the life of the conference reportedly noted that whatever resolutions delegates arrived at would not be applied until the constitution is amended to provide for a referendum.
He explained that it has not been easy amending the constitution, a fact that would affect whatever decisions the delegates reach.
“Despite the good intentions behind the convocation of the National Conference, decisions reached by it may amount to nothing if there’s no law for a referendum for Nigerians to endorse them,” he stressed.
Abdulazeez Ibrahim, a Kaduna-based lawyer, expressed similar fear, adding however that with adequate commitment and political will, the National Assembly can come to the rescue.
“Amending the constitution to insert referendum into it would prove the difficult part of this conference because apart from the National Assembly assenting the amendment by two-third vote, the bill has to go to the 36 Houses of Assembly for at least two-third of them to return a ‘yes’ vote to the amendment. The fact is that the National Assembly can do its part of inserting referendum into the constitution within 24 hours if it wants to do it,” he said.
Prof. Ben Nwabueze, an authority in Constitutional Law, argued in similar direction in an encounter with our correspondent earlier, stressing that the National Assembly can make a law allowing for referendum.
He said: “You cannot have a referendum without a law authorising it. Is the National Assembly saying that they don’t have the power to make the law authorising a referendum? It is not true. They have all the powers. They have power to make a law authorising a referendum.”
Lawmakers have, incidentally, not made any pronouncement on the obviously dicey situation, thus compounding the fears of the confab going the way of previous ones that ended without much to show for the time and resources thrown into them.
