The recently concluded conference ended as a waste of a dire nation’s resources
It began in controversy, and it ended an anti-climax. The opposition asserted the point, which was nothing new, that what Nigerians wanted was a sovereign national conference. Such a conference, which should trigger a fiery frankness from the conferees, would have no limits, including the necessity to renegotiate Nigeria’s existence, or its structure of today.
Those who supported it said any opportunity to confer should be welcomed, and the Federal Government, under the leadership of President Goodluck Jonathan, was offering a rare platform to put behind us a rancour of a generation.
There was a great ritual wrapped around it. As a prologue, an exploratory body toured the country to collate views, and its members seemed to bask in a certain democratic glow as though they had a mandate to renew Nigeria. The body known as the Committee on National Conference under Femi Okunrounmu, betrayed a blend of stately humility and vain bluster, in carrying out their duties. The dress rehearsal was seen as grand by a stand point and farcical by the other. A sense of a dual mandate racked the country, one mandate from the top and another from below. But it was not clear, since there was no poll, what the mandate from below wanted.
Once the stage was set, many politicians, civil rights personas, professionals, ethnic advocates and even clerics, jostled to partake in a drama of inclusion. Suddenly, ethnic masters started to coalesce their troops behind position papers and polemical postures justifying the value of the conference. They even pitched it as an invaluable watershed in history. Some opposition politicians veered out of their partisan togas and scrambled for spots as delegates. At certain junctures, the lines blurred between the opposition and the so-called establishment. It became accepted by a big part of the civil society as a legitimate effort not only to develop the country, but also to unify a fractious people.
Sober questions were raised. One, how could such a conference be called legitimate when the attendees emerged from the ranks and caprices of tired and recycled elite? Two, under what law was this claptrap jamboree going to be legitimated? Three, how could we reconcile its work and fruit with the existence of a bicameral legislature, the National Assembly, which enjoyed the backing of the constitution? Four, after the dust of deliberations settled, what shall we make of the report since it did not enjoy the stirrings of the law.
Under the questionable halo of patriots and the overhang of princely four-million-Naira-a-month allowance, the conference kicked off under the leadership of former Chief Justice Idris Kutigi, a respected personage.
The conference had, in its several sessions, a motley dose of comedy, tragedy, sobriety, rumination, frivolities and even subversion. At the end of the deliberations, a number of facts emerged. One, it was able, in spite of sceptics, to collate and unify its position in one document, however ponderous. Two, none of its positions was groundbreaking. Rather, it rehashed old conclusions already canvassed, and popular but also contained in reports submitted by several other committees to the president since the dawn of this republic. Ironically though, one of the issues was so contentious that the confab abdicated decision to the wisdom of the president.
Three, the president has foreclosed the possibility of a referendum, and therefore leaves the matter in the hands of the National Assembly, an institution that has looked askance at the feverous deliberations of the confab for about four months.
The third point made the whole affair an anticlimax. What it means is that there will be no referendum because it was not supposed to be a document of mass assent. It was an elite gathering with the bogus veneer of inclusiveness. Apart from a few sober attendees, it raked in professionals, ethnic champions, expired politicians, cronies, court jesters, buffoons, intellectual salesmen and political fuddy-duddies who parade themselves as icons.
With this motley crowd of opportunists, some of them making a vain show of quixotic patriotism by donating their allowances to nebulous charities, nothing great was expected by this newspaper from this conference. Nothing, it has turned out, is coming out of it. Some of the self-proclaimed progressives looked desperate after the confab as they started agitating in the media as though they wanted to force the hands of the president to implement the contents of a conference they knew was destined to a paralytic bin. They are undergoing a post-conference remorse and shame.
President Goodluck Jonathan, in a spurt of ill grace, launched broadsides at the critics of the confab by saying they have been proved wrong. Not so, mister president. The confab would be deemed successful if he can implement the contents of the report within the ambit of the law.
Some of the recommendations like the two-tier system of federalism, the separation of the position of accountant-general of the federation and accountant- general of the Federal Government, among others lacked originality. The issue of revenue formula and the principles of derivation were deadlocked and left with the president to set a committee to resolve. When existing states are famished for funds, the confab called for more states, up to 18.
An affair that cost billions of taxpayers’ money should not have ended up like this. But it did. That shows that it was a conference of futility, a burlesque rigmarole to squander the time and resources of a poor nation.
