Tag: conference

In this prece, Otasowie Osazuwa contends that the Presidential Advisory Committee on National Conference may have compromised its credibility and fairness, judging by the controversy that trailed the ranconous stakeholders, meeting in Benin-City, the Edo State capital.

When President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan announced his decision to convoke a national conference on October 1, 2013, the news was received with mixed feelings. For many, it should provide the long-awaited opportunity for the different ethnic nationalities to justify their continuous co-existence in an egalitarian Nigeria. In other words, they were convinced that the conference would provide the appropriate platform Nigerians need to address all the issues that seem to be threatening the unity of the people. Therefore, they had reasons to look forward to its convocation as it will surely provide the right atmosphere for the aggrieved to express their concerns with the hope that someone somewhere would listen to them and for once act right to save the country from one disastrous drift.

Many were not so thrilled. Particularly for the fact that the country has had ten different conferences in the past, meant to address same issues without any meaningful result, they wonder how the proposed one will be different. Certainly, those were the views already on ground before members of the advisory committee on the proposed national conference made a cameo appearance in Benin City, Edo state capital to seek the opinion of the people of the South-South geo-political zone on Monday, 28 October, 2013. Senator Femi Okuruonmu, chairman of the committee made the point that the conference would address all issues, listen to all views without pre-judging anyone when the group paid a courtesy call on the state governor, Comrade Adams Aliyu Oshiomhole.

Sadly, if what transpired at the Imaguero Colleague hall, venue of the event is anything to go by, there are indications that the conference may indeed, not be ready to listen to all Nigerians with different opinions. More or less, it goes a long way into proving that there may be a hidden agenda for the proposed conference, a reason for which stakeholders are convinced it may have died on arrival.

Trouble began when, in the spirit of fair hearing, the Comrade Governor expressed his personal views about the proposed conference. It was to the effect that he has no faith that the conference outcome would be better than the others before it. While reiterating his misgivings, the governor was unambiguous about his readiness to eat the humble pie in the event of a successful outcome. “I want to make my own comments. They are my views and not the views of Edo State. It is not the view of any particular ethnic nationality. I think as a Nigerian, we all have a stake in this country and we have a duty to lay a solid foundation for the future of this country. I have a duty to be honest and truthful on the views and position that I canvass. My views are different. I asked the question, why are we having a national conference? I believe that anyone who convenes a meeting must be clear why he convened a meeting. I have had the opportunity to travel far and wide. You don’t assemble people and then ask them, what do we talk about? Whoever wishes to convene a meeting must be clear on what the issues are. When you have stated why the meeting was convened, you can then ask what should be added or deleted. When I was the NLC president, a former president convened a national conference. People from various states converged, money was spent and in the end I can’t remember what came out of that conference. It is a valid point to make that we failed before, we can make amend but it is important we learn from our history. I will be surprised if anything changes. As a leader, I have no business to mislead anyone. This conference will not be different from any previous conference…”

Evidently, there is hardly any justification for anyone, let alone, a member of the presidential committee, to heckle him for airing his opinion. Indeed, some have argued that the governor should not have spoken the way he did for fears that his views can’t just be personal but a collective view of Edo people. The same people chose to forget that Nyiam, a member of the presidential advisory committee, represents the president. If they have not, they should be able to remind themselves that Nyiam’s action is not only a collective abuse on the people of Nigeria but also a slap on the integrity of Mr. President. The only good thing is that, so far, no rational observer has adjudged Nyiam’s reaction as proper even though he has attempted to justify it himself. For whatever it is worth, other members of the committee have given their verdict that his action is nothing but a sad commentary on the purpose for which they are touring the different geo-political zones. However, a closer examination of Nyiam, a retired army colonel with an odious pedigree, indicates that, acting the way he did simply proves the fact that he is on a familiar turf. For starters, Nyiam is the same man who almost gave millions of Nigerians a heart attack when he pushed a group of young Nigerian army officers into a coup with the ignoble aim of shredding the country into bits.

Hon. Jonathan Asake represented  Zangon Kataf/Jaba Constituency in the House of Representatives between 1999 and 2003. He also served as a Senior Special Assistant to former President Olusegun Obasanjo. The National Youth Leader of the Middle Belt Forum spoke  with TONY AKOWE on the proposed national conference, national security and other issues.

President Goodluck Jonathan has proposed a national conference.

What is your reaction?

First, I want to commend the President for this act of courage, foresight and yielding to the yearnings of the majority of Nigerians for a national dialogue to discuss the very basis for our corporate existence, to discuss the challenges that are facing this nation and explore the avenue for greater cohesive living. If an opportunity can be created for this, I think that it is a great act of patriotism and courage. I want to say that the committee that was inaugurated was carefully selected by the President and given the mandate to work out a frame work for the conference, which I think is a good and positive step. As Middle Belters, we have already made known what we expect. We expect them to design a framework such that the conference will not be like other conferences before it.

The conference deliberations should have no-go areas like before. Let Nigerians talk on issues that bother on our collective existence as a nation. Let everything be brought before the conference for discussion. In addition, all stakeholders in this country must be invited. All interest groups such as socio-cultural and socio-political groups like Ohanaze Idi-igbo, Arewa Consultative Forum, Afenifere, Middle Belt Forum and Southsouth Peoples Assembly should be able to have very strong representation.

We should also have ethnic nationalities in attendance because that is where the problem lies. In the North, we have ethnic nationalities that are considered minorities, who have continued to suffer deprivation since the amalgamation of this country and subdued to injustice and oppression as well as extreme marginalisation. Since then, nothing has changed because the colonialists, when they came, brought in the indirect rule system and subjugated most of these tribes under the majority Hausa/Fulani and what came out of that was the injustices and imbalances you have today, the discrimination, the oppression and it is clear that these structures can no longer hold because the people are agitated and an opportunity must be given to these ethnic groups in the north and those of the south as well as all ethnic nationalities in the country to come together and be part of this discussion on how to make the Nigeria state a more virile and stronger state for everybody.

Critics of the President believe that what the President has done is just a Greek gift and that it will not address the issues on ground…

The truth is that, in every given situation, you will always have sceptics, who will never believe that anything is genuine, who will never believe the sincerity of purpose for any action taken. You will always have such people. On the other hand, you will always have distractors operating side by side with those sceptics. The distractors are those who will never see anything in its real value. If you kill a lion, they will say you have killed a cat and will never applaud any effort. So, I believe that we have sceptics and distractors of the present government, who will never believe in the sincerity of purpose of anything the President does; while the distractors, combine with the opposition, especially those within his party and government will, always undermine whatever he does.

For us in the Middle Belt, we know that we don’t need the verdict of the sceptics or that of the distractors or that of any other person to tell us that the time is ripe for a national dialogue or that the time is ripe for a conference that will discuss the situation that Nigeria finds itself as well as the challenges that are facing us today. So, if they are saying that it is a Greek gift from the President, let them wait and see what will happen because we believe there is sincerity of purpose in the convocation of this conference. Again, if you look at the impunity that is happening in the country today, you will discover that life has virtually become meaningless for every Nigeria, particularly in the north. You can be walking on the street and somebody will come and cut your head, which is criminal in nature, but he can decide to use religion and he is let off the hook. For how long are we going to continue with that impunity?

We have to come together and discuss that, if we are living under the constitution, let the constitution be supreme. If we are not living under the constitution because some people don’t want to, let us agree that we will not. but those that agree to live under the constitution where the rule of law abound, should be allowed to live under the constitution, which will be a ground norm. These are the issues and so, I don’t believe that it is a Greek gift; I don’t believe that it is there to divert attention as some people would want to believe. I do believe that the time is ripe and the symptoms are there that the Nigerian nation is a patient that needs serious medical attention; that needs serious physicians to take a critical look at it and proffer solution on how to cure it.

There is this fear, especially in the north, that the national dialogue will divide the country. Do you share this view?

That is laughable. It is laughable when somebody wakes up and makes a sweeping statement without any proof as to why he is making such a statement. Why will a dialogue divide a nation? Imagine you have a house where you have a major crisis. It is left for you as the head of the house to call a meeting of your household to say, come let us reason together. It is actually when there is a bad situation that you call for a dialogue and not that dialogue leads to a bad situation. It is a warp logic that someone is thinking that dialogue will lead to confusion.

It is only when you have an atmosphere of confusion that you call for dialogue so that you can have a calm atmosphere that is condusive for everybopdy. Those saying so have not substantiated their claim and I believe that this dialogue will not cause disintegration. it is Nigeria that is about to disintegrate because of the impunity, because of the challenges; because of the threat that are coming and because of the weak structures that we have that cannot fight some of these challenges. We have very weak structures that cannot fight corruption and unemployment as well as the vices that we have today and fight insecurity effectively.

Look at the fight against Boko Haram. It has been reported time and time again that there are saboteurs within the security circle sabotaging the efforts of the security agencies. In Nigeria, we cannot count the number of highly trained security agents we have lost since this fight started. The number can only be comparable to a war situation. So, we need to talk about this. So, instead of somebody looking at it as dividing the country, we should look at it as bringing the country together and see reason why we should dialogue on why we must be under the constitution, wipe out corruption, create employment for the teeming youths that are readily available for recruitment into these militant groups, whether in the south or in the north.

It is going to give us reasons why our schools should be reopened and why we must go back to the good old days when you don’t have to send your children to private schools. Today, if you don’t send your child to a private school, that child cannot get the best education and it is not everybody that can send his child to the private school. So, we need to come together and ask the question, what brought the decay in our educational system so that we bring the schools back. That is what dialogue will do for us. So, I believe that dialogue will bring cohesion.

Your party, the PDP, is in crisis and many believe that the 2015 presidential election is at the heart of this crisis. What is your take on this?

Certainly, it is about 2015. On behalf of the Middle Belt, I have said it over and over again. First, since 2011, when President Jonathan was contesting, certain people in the north insisted that he must not contest, which was a clear violation of his constitutional right to contest because he was qualified to contest. Even though the constitution qualified him to contest, they were using a gentleman agreement of the PDP, which itself is under the constitution.

Now the constitution guarantee that he can recontest for a second term and those same people are coming to say that there was an agreement and Mr. President has continued to insist that there was no such agreement. They are at it again, over heating the system, deceiving Nigerians and telling Nigerians that there was such an agreement. Now, let us be careful with what we are doing in this country. President Goodluck Jonathan comes from a section of this country, the south-south that has never had this Presidency since independence. For the first time, a person from that section of the country is President and you are asking him to run for only one term.

You are not using the constitution to disqualify him; but using your own privileged position of coming from another region to disqualify him. It is not acceptable. Secondly, he is a minority and comes from a section of the country that is regarded as a minorities; the block outside the Hausa/Fulani extractions. There are minorities in this country who are actually the majority. We have them in the north, the south and the Middle Belt and we associate with President Jonathan because he is a minority because we are also minorities. So, whoever tells President Jonathan that he cannot run in 2015 is telling the south-south people that they are not qualified to contest the Presidency of this country; you are telling the Middle Belters and indeed the entire minorities of this country by your own words and not by the constitution that they cannot contest and we think that this is unacceptable.

Goodluck Jonathan is qualified to contest and he will run for the 2015 elections and we are ready to give him our votes. If we don’t want him, it means that he has not performed and we will do what democracy proscribed by voting him out and elect somebody that we think can do the job. Tell me which President before him has made effort to ensure that the Nigerian nation is cohesively bound together like President Jonathan. With the challenges we have had, if it were another President, this country would have been at war. But he has the calmness of spirit that is needed of a leader to hold this country together. He has gone ahead to say we cannot continue to be at war with each other, let us come and reason together. Look at those who are asking the President not to contest in 2015. The G7 governors and their antecedents. Governor Babangida Aliyu of Niger state was a Permanent Secretary in the Federal Capital Territory Administration. Go and check how he became the flag bearer of the PDP in Niger state and suddenly, he is the one leading this opposition against the President.

Even within the party, they have explore mechanism to settle whatever grievances they have and because most of them are in their second terms, they are thinking where do we go from here. Murtala Nyako of Adamawa state was in ANPP when they brought him to the PDP to become the flag bearer and instead of being grateful about that, he is overheating the party. The same applies to Wammako in Sokoto state and we all know we already had a candidate in the former Minister of Water resources, Mukthari Shagari, a refined gentleman before Wammako was brought in. Wammako was deputy to Bafarawa of the ANPP before he was brought to take the PDP ticket and he is the one destroying the party. Now, they are using the name of the north, saying that they want the north to be incharge. I have not even spoken about Kwankwaso who, when he was campaigning for governorship was campaigning for the CPC candidate as President which violates the party constitution. There is no way this rascality could have been allowed, but they were allowed. If you look at the provisions of our party constitution, all these are punishable.

These rascality in the party should be punished, but the President and the party chairman has a large heart and has been following them with that large heart, pleading that we should not destroy the party, build join hands to build it. So, what are they looking for? They want to take over power. Go to their states and see what they have done with the money they collect. Must they become President before they perform for their people. If you put together what those states has received in the last six and half years, it is not commensurate with the performance you see on ground. Where are they taking that money to? The north is highly backward and underdeveloped because of such kind of leaders that we have and the youth of the north are sick and tired of them and we know that it deception all the way. What they are doing is for self-aggrandisement and because of their greed and not power to develop the north. They are not looking for power to unite the north or to develop the north. Where were they when this Boko Haram insurgency are being perpetrated in the north. In their individual states of the north, what measures did they take to assist the federal government to deal with the Boko Haram insecurity in the north? They have continued to conspire and keep quite. There is a conspiracy of silence by most of these governors. Maybe they want the President to fail so that they will have a reason. So they are watching instead of working as co-partners to create job opportunities, being co-partners to arrest youth restiveness and upgrade the standard of women in our society. In most of their states today, people cannot stay there, but are drifting into Abuja and other states that are safe. They have not told Nigerians what they are doing with the money they are receiving and that is why we are saying that if it is about 2015, they cannot sell. That is why I believe that they are selfish, greedy and the Nigerian people have long understood that.

Prof Ango Abdullahi and his Northern Elders Forum as well as the Arewa Consultative Forum believe that the Presidency should come to the north in 2015 and that the President is oblige to honour the agreement he entered into with the north to return power to them, in 2015.

It is their belief and not the belief of the entire. I have told you that northerners are democrats and who are the northerners he is talking about? Is it Ango Abdullahi and his colleagues that are the northerners or Babangida Aliyu and his G7 governors? Majority of northerners are aware that whoever is emerging as leader should emerge based on the provisions of the constitution. Is the person qualified to contest? Whether he is from the north or from the south, once he emerges, all the people wants is the restoration of power, improved security situation, improved agricultural production. Before now, about 80 percent of Ministers of Agriculture have been from the north. Where are the groundnut pyramid we use to pride ourselves about? Now, we have a minister who is not even from the north that efforts is being made to take us back to our glory. This is an open secret that everybody knows. So, if they are talking about power coming back to the north, yes, we want power to come back to the north, but based on constitutional provisions. If it is based on constitutional provisions, it will come to real and patriotic northerners who love the north and loved Nigeria and will come and improve on the lot of the north and use the resources of the north to develop the north and not to develop their own greed and selfishness. Most of these people take their wealth abroad, leaving northerners to languish in poverty. Go the core north and see almajiris that are lined up on the street without going to school. It is President Goodluck Jonathan that came up with a policy of educating the almajiris and has released over N5 billion for that purpose. Which of the northern President has looked at that and done such to improve on the wellbeing of the north? That is what is causing security. If they give these almajiris education, both western and Islamic, they will not be readily available for recruitment into militancy. What are those governors doing? Are they buying into that almajiri programme in their states? Are they creating schools to take them off the street? Instead, they have refused to stay in their states, but coming to the centre daily. Ask them where they sleep every night and you will discover that they are always in Abuja. They will tell you that they are fighting for the Presidency to go to the north. What do they want to do with the presidency when it comes to the north? They have also not told northerners what they did with the presidency that has been ion the north all these years because we still have poverty on the ground. We are still the most background section of the country in terms of education.

Communities in southern Kaduna where you come from have in recent times been attacked by unknown gun and this has led to the call for the establishment of a military base in the area. Do you think this is the solution to the problem?

The truth is that I don’t know much about military operations; but one thing I know is that there have been several attacks in the southern part of Kaduna. The attacks were not there before. We were hearing of these attacks in neigbouring Plateau state. What we use to hear about the attackers when caught is that they use to say that they are tracing their cows that were rustled from them and that they traced the cows to the houses where they made the attacks. It was when they started carrying out these attacks in southern Kaduna that we realised that all these was hogwash, that they were cooked stories. First, the Fulanis who are carrying out these attacks are carrying out a programme based on a specific design. They claimed that their cattle were being rustled by the natives which is not true because the natives are also grazing cattle in large number. I have a friend who is a retired Naval Commander who also have a farm in Zonkwa. About two months ago, they went into the farm while he was away in Abuja and took over 40 of his cattle. The following week, they went to another farm not too far from his farm and took away over 150 cattle. It was while on their way that the youths engaged them and recover most of those cattle with casualties on both sides. If those people were caught alive, the will say that the cattle were their own and that they were tracing them and were able to trace them to those farms which is not true. It is a ground conspiracy. So, most of these attacks are coming from that first category of pure bandits, criminals that are specialised in cattle rustling and many of them, are coming from the borders of this nation and they are being pushed by their internal conspirators. We have heard the claim that they said cattle rearing is not for any other tribe but the Fulanis and therefore, they will frustrate all other tribes from rearing cattle. We have done our research in Southern Kaduna Indigenous Forum and came up with this finding. The second category is doing with the Janjaweed did in Sudan where communities are targeted at night while they are asleep and hack them down with their children and their old ones and destroy their farm land. They do that to frustrate the communities so that they can chase them away and take over precious land. If you look at those areas in the Plateau and southern Kaduna, you will see that they are very good grazing areas with good mountainous region which is very excellent for grazing cattle. These militias are doing this with the aim of taking over the land from the communities and settle there. Infact, if you go to Fadan Attakar, you will discover that the Fulani invaders have called their fellow fulanis to come and settle there. The third category is the political category. People are sponsored to go and stage these attacks so that they can score political points and make noise that there is insecurity in the land. Closely attached to that is the monetary aspect because when you create an atmosphere of insecurity, money will roll out and some people are great beneficiaries of the insecurity that abound in the north today or even in the south. If the problem of Boko Haram or these militia within the north is solved, some people’s ways of making cheap money will be gone and they don’t want that to be closed. So, they will continue to subvert all efforts by government to solve the problem. This also add to the issue of national dialogue. It is unfair for some people to be armed, come by night and hack down an entire community and when those communities will keep bows and arrows to defend themselves, they will go by day and say some communities have bows and arrows as well as dane guns and security agents will go and seize those things from the communities only to pave way for an attack the following night by armed people who are not controlled. These people carry AK47 with their cattle and they go through these grazing routes and frustrate security agencies from discovering these places. But when they are discovered, they are given another coloration that they are not terrorists and defend them because it is a well conspired chain within the system and that is why the attacks continue to persist. That underscore the main reason why we must face ourselves and talk.

So, what are the people of southern Kaduna doing about these attacks?

What can the people of southern Kaduna and be extension, the Middle Belt do? the truth is that we have a government in place and what we need to do is to tell the authorities. Can we take to arms? If you take to arms, you are doing so against the provisions of the constitution and the authorities and so, the best thing to do is to report. For those calling for the establishment of military base in the area, may be that is how they think that problem can be solved. But personally, I think that the establishment of military base will not solve the problem because since the post election violence, the entire Plateau and southern Kaduna has been taken over by military check points. But you will see attacks taking place near such check points. So, what has happened? So, I think that the establishment of military base may not even solve the problem. We just need to talk and see how and why these things are happening especially with the element of sabotage and internal conspiracy.

For peace to reign in Kaduna state, the north and Nigeria, what is your advise to government.

My advice to the Kaduna state government is that they should take steps to build confidence and trust among the people because all these attacks is further breaking trust and confidence and the people are beginning to have doubt about the capacity of the state to defend them. The situation should not be allowed to degenerate into a situation of chaos where people will begin to look for ways to defend themselves. If we degenerate into a situation where people no longer trust the capacity of government to defend them, it will be a bad situation. I must say that they Kaduna state government has been trying because anytime there is an attack, the governor visits them and plead with the people not to take the laws into their hands and I think that is the best they can do. But I think they can do better than that by creating other measures to protect the people and synegise with the federal government and ensure that all the structu4res of securing the communities are taken care of. Like it happened after the Sharia crisis in 2000, I know that the then governor, Makarfi synegised with the federal government and Rapid Response squad were established in all flash points and that brought about peace. So, the government should develop a deliberate strategy that will ensure that all flash points across the state are adequately taken care of. Intelligence gathering and information dissemination should be improved upon especially in areas where these attacks are taking place because you may discover that it is the same set of people that are doing these things. But when they are nabbed and properly dealt with, you will find out that the thing will come down.

ENDS