THE MOST DRAMATIC CONFERENCE EVER

THE MOST DRAMATIC CONFERENCE EVER

By Kay Aderibigbe

 

The assertion that 'Nigeria as a state only enjoys an abstract existence' according to Oyovbaire Sam, seems so quite incredible, but socio-political occurrences over the years have lent credence to that fact.

For a variety of reasons Nigerian politicians, who have also paraded themselves as administrators have displayed embarrassing and unintelligent wits in their resolve to addressing societal problems, yet, they remained impenitent through the course of their inglorious actions.

 

We have been following keenly, decisions of the National Conference since the division of the delegates into twenty specialized committees to study different issues with fundamental errors.  Among which are devolution of powers; cost of governance; structure of government and the entire outlook of the 1999 constitution.

 

Meanwhile, the delegates started out with the normal sickness of 'consensus'. Following that was the problem of adopting the agreed threshold, i.e. 70% to arriving at a popular consensus on any concluded issue. For instance, matters such as state police; rotational presidency; adoption of six geo-political zones; eradication of 774 LGAs from the constitution; resource control and indegene/settler have been criticized by a section of the conference.

 

Consequently, the opposing team within the conference who demanded that there ought to be a reversal of almost all the initially agreed upon issue is made up of delegates from the North East and North Central. They canvassed for the adoption of what they termed personality vote or head count, as against voice vote.

 

Prior to the emergence of the mushroom committees on all these so called 'national issues' there was created within the conference, a group of political figures representing each geo-political zones, saddled with the responsibility of harnessing divergent opinions into a concrete whole; in order to promote a less-rowdy plenary session. They call these people consensus bridge-building group, but I call them the ‘political silencer’.

For record purpose: Chief Dokpesi, Edwin Clark, Gen Ike Nwachukwu, Prof Ibarahim Gambari, Prof Jerry Gana, Ibrahim Comassie, Prof Anwalu Yadudu, Olu Falae and eleven others formed the group.

 

Majority of the delegates approve of this group and they are quite aware of its functions. In the same vein, they all agreed that the cost of governance was too high and should be drastically cut down. Prompting for example, the recommendation that ministers should be reduced to eighteen (18) instead of the abnormal (36*2). On the contrary, the same conference deemed it fit to increase number of federating states in Nigeria to 54.

 

Little wonder they clamoured for state police and resource control. The implication of more state creation will not only plunge the country into financial  chaos, but economic stagnation. This is because the whole idea of cost of administration reduction is at variance with federal character principle. Those daft delegates that refused, neglected, failed or forgot to pluck out the root of administrative and political laxity (federal character) from the system will only succeed at making the economically non-viable states regress the more.

 

To make a mess of the whole morass, we should be expecting 108 ministers, because only Nigerian government appoints a minister for state; 54 commissioners of partisan police; 166 senators and as many as possible representatives. The synthesis will therefore be, more militia in the South, more Boko Haram in the North, more kidnappers in the East, since the real issue of economic failure, energy, education, value of naira, unemployment and misplaced socio-cultural values are left unaddressed.

 

I am really sorry that the same old people, like I told us in my previous article on national conference, who have presented a somewhat insuperable posture of Nigeria's situation are still commissioned with tax payers' money to blow the dust out of our eyes. Alas!