Bola Tinubu: Why Jonathan’s imposed National Conference will fail
The
core questions to ask here is how credible, reliable and capable is the
current President to be able to midwife a critical conference such as
this? Will this President be sincere enough to let all the issues that
are on the agenda be exhaustively discussed at the conference? Will this
President have the guts to implement fully all final resolutions of the
conference without fear or favor or any pandering?
Since I first made known my initial
reaction to President Jonathan’s proposed National Dialogue/Conference,
the daggers have been out against me. The paid public relations gangs of
the administration and some sympathizers have gone into overdrive in
the media and public fora to denounce me for the position I have taken. I
thought I ought to enjoy the same right they have exercised by
supporting Jonathan’s conference to also reject it and make my reaction
known. Unfortunately it does not seem so.
But I have news for them. I will not
take anything I have said back on the proposed National Dialougue by
this present administration. I insist that the planned national dialogue
is a ‘Greek’ gift and public deception. I say beware of the Greek gift;
let us first of all, ask a series of questions.
The government’s proposal is a walk down
a back alley that leads only to a dead end. It has the same empty
taste
as sitting down to dine after all the food has been eaten and the table
cleared.
I intend to raise fundamental
questions/interrogations in the following response. I am known to have
always reviewed the message or policy action of government after which I
simply proceed to respond to the message and not the messenger. But
this time around, my focus and response is to the messenger and not the
message essentially. Questioning the messenger and his motives is my
mission here as a Nigerian and a political leader. Also in warning
against Jonathan’s proposed Conference, I will put forward a few
practicable suggestions.
The core questions to ask here is how
credible, reliable and capable is the current President to be able to
midwife a critical conference such as this? Will this President be
sincere enough to let all the issues that are on the agenda be
exhaustively discussed at the conference? Will this President have the
guts to implement fully all final resolutions of the conference without
fear or favor or any pandering?
This is an administration that has been
known to have flip- flopped on so many critical issues of national
importance. President Jonathan was part of two issues of national
importance in the recent past; Amnesty and the Uwais Panel on electoral
reform. We all know what has happened to these two issues. The Amnesty
conceived from inception has been corrupted and hijacked by the
President’s clique. It is one of Nigeria’s drain pipes. A slush fund for
political expeditions and a conduit to siphon money to the boys.
The Uwais Panel report gathers dust and
suffers from constant cherry picking. What about the much-publicized
SURE-P initiative of this administration? Another ill-conceived and
fraudulently implemented program of this administration. Billions of
naira have so far disappeared into private pockets and the treasury
still bleeds. I can go on and on. Is this the leader we want to trust
with organizing a National dialogue or is it conference they call it?
Where is the capability? Where is the sincerity? Where is the presence
of mind?
Recent Nigerian political history bears
me out in this instance. Recall the call for a Sovereign National
Conference began in earnest in the latter phase of the political
transition programme of military president Ibrahim Babangida. Claiming
that it was laying a solid foundation for a democracy that will endure,
the regime turned Nigeria into a laboratory for all manner of political
stunts.
Nigerians came to conclude that the
regime was pursuing a not-so-hidden agenda of self-perpetuation and
called for a Sovereign National conference to replace a transition
programme that had clearly lost its momentum and its direction.
Next door, in Benin Republic, a
Sovereign National Conference was being staged to chart a new course for
a country that had virtually come to a standstill. Its crisp, bold and
purposeful proceedings resonated in Nigeria, and Nigerians yearning for
such a conference embraced the Beninoise model.
The military regime seemed at a point to
embrace the concept, too, and even tried to enlist some prominent
citizens to translate it into practice. But when it appeared those
citizens had taken the regime more seriously than it took itself, the
regime scuttled the idea and decreed jail sentences for anyone
purporting to stage a national conference.
Then came the presidential election
debacle of June 12, 1993, and with it, renewed calls for a Sovereign
National Conference. The election crisis swept out the military regime,
but not before it had planted a surrogate, the so-called Interim
National Government, a clueless outfit that lasted three months but
drove Nigeria to the edge of ruin, until it was overthrown by General
Abacha.
To win public acceptance, Abacha
promised to stage a National Conference with “constituent powers.” This
was another act of bad faith, for Abacha packed the assembly with his
hand-picked nominees. Those who were not his nominees were products of
an election that was widely boycotted, persons who could hardly be
described as authentic representatives of their constituencies. The
conference exercised nothing close to the “constituent powers” Abacha
had promised. The five political parties that emerged from the
constitutional framework designed by the Assembly all ended up endorsing
Abacha as their presidential candidate. Abacha’s death ended the
charade. Knowing that Nigerians were no longer prepared to put up with
military rule, Abacha’s colleagues hastily put together a constitution
to serve as the legal framework for the civilian administration
inaugurated in 1999.
The constitution was not published until
it came into effect. It was not debated. Those who took office swore an
oath to defend a Constitution they had not seen, and the provisions of
which they did not know.
Soon, it became clear that it was
riddled with grave defects. Despite its portentous preface, “We, the
People,” it was not a people’s constitution. The people played hardly
any role in its writing. It did not reflect their yearnings. Some legal
authorities even went so far as to call the document a forgery.
And so, demands for a Sovereign National
Conference broke out afresh, to design a new constitutional order for
Nigeria, one anchored on the core principles of federalism and warranted
by the preface, “We the People.”
Then came the Obasanjo’s constitutional
review process by the National Assembly in the twilight of his
administration. The process came up with 118 recommendations most of
which were far reaching and dealt with critical and contentious issues
of nationhood. It became ill-fated due to the failure to smuggle in the
third term tenure extension provision.The rest as they say, is now
history.
Now, we are about to embark on a similar
futile exercise. And here is why. Until some two to three months back,
our demands for a sovereign national conference found little sympathy
in the Executive and Legislative branches of government, until some
three weeks ago when Senate President David Mark, issued a qualified
endorsement. Then, in his National Day Broadcast, President Jonathan
Goodluck, announced to everyone’s surprise that the Federal Government
would indeed sponsor National Conference, at which Nigeria’s ethnic
nationalists would discuss and negotiate the terms of continued
association.
Within days, Dr Jonathan named a
chairman and members of a committee to advise on modalities for staging
the conference and submit a report within one month.
I, like other well-meaning Nigerians
must welcome this shift. It is an admission, at last, that the wide
cracks in the national fabric can no longer be papered over, and that
the time has come for fresh thinking on fundamental problems, the
existence of which has for too long been denied.
Yet, President Jonathan’s epiphany–if
epiphany it is and not an expedient calculated to enhance his 2015
reelection bid – should be subjected to searching questions.
It is difficult to lay aside the
suspicion that his sudden conversion is all about 2015. Otherwise, why
the sudden endorsement of a National Conference, not merely in
principle, but with a rush toward some form of implementation? What has
happened that was not already in play in all those years during which
the authorities rejected demands for a National Conference?
Second, it is also difficult to lay
aside the suspicion that the government is now embracing the idea with a
view to watering it down, if not smothering it altogether. What its
proponents have been canvassing is a Sovereign National Conference
organized by the sovereign people of Nigeria, not one staged by the
government. Government will figure in that Conference only as a
facilitator, not as organizer.
Many of the ethnic nationalities
clamouring for a Sovereign National Conference are contesting nothing
less than the legitimacy of the Nigerian State as presently constituted.
It cannot be an answer to their misgivings that the Federal Government,
the agent of that state, is set to take charge of a Sovereign National
Conference designed to chart a new path.
Third, Dr Jonathan did not indicate
whether the Conference will be sovereign or exercise constituent powers.
That omission is not reassuring. What Nigerians have been demanding is a
Sovereign National Conference whose decisions can only be ratified or
rejected by the people in a national referendum. There is no room for a
Government White Paper of Blue Paper or Paper of any colour whatsoever
in such a scheme.
Fourth, it must be asked whether this is
an opportune moment for the conference, when the ruling party is in
disarray, a large portion of the country is convulsed by Boko Haram
violence and killings, and permutations over a general election have
already taken centre stage in the affairs of the nation two years ahead
of schedule.
Would staging a National Conference in
such a setting not overheat the polity? Would it not be better to defer
the Conference until after the general elections? There is still so much
to do to ensure that the election is free and fair, conforms to the
best practices, and represents the true will of the people.
Though I remain an unrepentant supporter
of a genuinely Sovereign National Conference, I am suspicious of this
present concoction because it is half- baked and fully deceptive.
Government’s sincerity is questionable, the timing is also suspect. Now
that this government is sinking in a pool of political and economic hot
water of its own making, it seizes hold of the national conference idea
as if it were a life jacket.
This government habitually puts the
wrong leg forward. In the face of debilitating terrorist attacks by Boko
Haram, kidnappings across the country and a general insecurity, this
government wants to open up another political front by hurriedly
organizing a national conference rankles the brain.
This government has not the honesty,
foresight, tolerance and objectivity to hold a National Conference of
any type. This government is so partisan and parochial it can’t even
hold its own party together how dare it even think it can organize a
national conference that lives up to its name by being truly
representative of all the nation’s constituent parts. At most, all they
can conduct is a conference comprised of one section of their party and
those shell, artificial civil society groups that purport to reflect the
public’s mind yet do nothing but spew government propaganda and get
paid good naira for their service. This government cannot hold a
National Conference anymore than a comatose man can stand and hold up a
candle that the rest of us might see our way to a better Nigeria.
Before embarking on new public relations
ploys to whitewash its tarnished record, the government should treat
some long outstanding issues and matters. This government cannot give
what it does not have.
If the conference must be held now, we
must return to the spade work already done by the Obasanjo government in
the aspect of constitutional review. Let the Jonathan government bring
it out, remove the third term toxic component and set up a technical
review committee to examine the 118 recommendations therein. We must
continue from where we disagreed. Nation building is a progressive work
and to totally jettison the considerable spade work already done is to
set back the hands of the clock. Time is not on our side.
Secondly, this government should
implement the Uwais recommendations on electoral reforms. That report
was the work of imminent Nigerians and it was done after widespread
consultations to constituencies far and wide. We all know that our
electoral system is broken and unfair. If the President has done nothing
to fully implement this corrective report that would fix a system so
blatantly broken, why would he implement recommendations of national
conference if those recommendations do not suit his narrow purposes? The
government should first implement this important work in order to
demonstrate to Nigerians that it can hold and honor the outcome of a
National dialogue.
This government should do so to show
that it has nothing to hide and is willing to engage in the upcoming
electoral contest on a level playing field.
This government must first show good
faith for Nigerians to believe them. President Jonathan is not the man
to give Nigerians a true National Conference. He can only give us a
“Jonathan conference” as bitter icing on the sour cake his government
has become. This government lacks the presence of mind and the decency
to implement a national conference.
This administration has not achieved any
tangible transformation because it has no concrete goals. Now it tilts
and staggers under the weight of insecurity. Claims of transformation
and of building an economy that is robust and institutions of democracy,
by the President shows someone who believes fiction is more important
than fact and imagination is more genuine than reality. While I would
not mind such a person to be a leading figure in our Nollywood film
industry, I am frightened that he is the chief resident in Aso Villa.”
Both in timing and in style, previous
administrations adopted the same tricks of National Conference as a
framework to structure their agenda to which people presented memoranda
and attended plenaries before realising it was a trick.
This government’s offer of a National
Conference is a wingless bird. It will not fly. The advisory committee
set up to design a framework and come up with recommendations as to the
form, structure and mechanism of the process will soon find out they are
on a journey with no destination save the wall of futility.
Yes, we need to talk. However, we need a
national conference that is truly sovereign and not one dictated by the
reactionary and regressive elements of the ruling party. This is not
the way to clear Nigeria from danger. This is a selfish ploy that will
place the nation deeper in darkness and indirection.
Nigeria is adrift and unless we start a
discourse aimed at updating and improving our political economy and its
structures, we might wake up one day from a night devoid of dreams
because we have turned into a nation devoid of hope.
However, an imposed national conference
by individuals who have shown total disdain for anything nationalistic
that does not unduly benefit them and who have demonstrated lack of
respect for the opinions of others because they are in “Power” will have
little success. It will be an empty and expensive futility with no true
dividends for a people wanting their leaders to show them a way out of
the pit and not a way deeper into it.
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Source: Premium Times Newspapers
Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions ofKevin Djakpor's Blog