President Jonathan’s decision that the national conference will report to the National Assembly makes the whole affair a waste of time and money
Less than a month after President Goodluck Jonathan unveiled his ambition to set sail on a national conference, his ambition has begun to unravel. He has said that the report of the national conference will be sent to the National Assembly for approval.
This statement exposed the whole definition of the conference from the presidency’s point of view. He sees the national conference as a mere opportunity to dialogue without power. If the conference had a fundamental power to re-enunciate its dreams, redefine its ethos and politics, restructure the nation and vouchsafe our past to a future rippling with clear vision, why would it report to the National Assembly?
This has not only exposed President Jonathan’s parochial standpoint on the matter, but also clarified the contrast for those who have called for a sovereign national conference. The difference between both positions is now potent. For Jonathan, the conference will be an anaemic affair, even if full of debates, disagreements and the theatre of backslapping. It could debate the issue of state police, the cartography of revenue allocation, the furies of insecurity and the darkness cast over our education system. In the final analysis, the lawmakers will decide what they want and what to discard. Has the same National Assembly not been engaged in such parley across the country in the name of constitutional amendments? What results have emanated from them?
According to the Jonathan agenda, once the conference has completed its work, the presidency would append its assent.
For those calling for a national conference of the sovereign type, the issue is more sober. It entails a representation of people from all over the country, covering ethnicity, geography, class and tendencies. The result will not be subject to any special institution like the National Assembly, the presidency and it is above the power of the courts for any sort of adjudication. It is a sovereign in miniature having embodied the soul of the entire nation in trust.
This means the sovereign body cannot be appointed as perfunctorily as President Jonathan has done. It is a matter of national survival and progress. If, as President Jonathan has declared, the conference representatives will not be hamstrung by any fetters, including the issue of the survival of the nation, why would they want any existing institution to decide on the wisdom or foolishness of their submissions?
The conference, among other things, will discuss the essences of the presidency and the National Assembly. It will decide how the representatives are elected, what powers they should wield, what kind of funding they could amass, how they relate to the electorate and the limits of their swagger. As it regards the National Assembly, it will also have to deliberate whether we need a National Assembly, or whether we need a bi-camera or uni-camera legislature, and the modes of representation and operation.
In the sort of debate and powers without fetters, the sovereign national conference could decide that the way both institutions are constituted do not chime with the popular will. If that is the case, the National Assembly suffused with persons who might want to retain the status quo, may decide to assign the full report of the conference to a committee, and the process may end up restoring the status quo for the National Assembly. Not just that, other aspects of the report that today’s decrepit elite may oppose may become subjects of lobbying.
At the end, fundamental aspects of the report would have been either deleted or diluted, leaving for the presidency a corrupted version of the people’s will. The presidency, also aware of its interests, may do same.
The people’s position would have been compromised, and the final copy a mockery of intense work done by the people’s representatives.
But if the people have finished their work, what will be left? It will be subjected to a plebiscite, and the majority of the people will be asked to either endorse the document or reject this. From historical examples, such conferences often exercise tremendous power because they are a precursor to a fundamental change in the way things are run. Its existence necessarily curtails powers of all institutions as they pertain to the conference’s powers.
No chief executive or legislature can assume powers over those of the conference. Those may be the nuances that are troubling President Jonathan and his fellow travellers. That accounts for their decision to subject the people’s will to a coterie of interested men and women.
Other nations have passed through that process, whether it was the United States, Britain, France, Germany or even South Africa. It is not often a tea party. It offers an opportunity for unflattering introspection. Every tribe or region or class will spill its views with unvarnished candour, and the conference will have to distill every word or body through the rigour of debates and sundry other engagements. It is an opportunity for histories and cultures of different parts of the country to collide and align.
That is why we have called a national conference a dialogue with power, not one as ritual. If we follow the pattern President Jonathan has set in motion, we cannot avoid the conclusion that it is another exercise in squander-mania and diversion. It is a rigmarole that will lead back to where we have always been. It is a dialogue without power.
