Despite being one of the foremost advocates of National Conference,
former governor of Lagos State and leader of the All Progressives Congress,
APC, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu has stridently opposed the confab being proposed
by President Goodluck Jonathan. To him, the President does not have the
capacity to organise such an important national dialogue. In this piece, Tinubu
critically analyse the issues at stake and his submission.
Since I first made known my initial reaction
to President Goodluck Jonathan’s proposed National Dialogue/Conference, the
daggers have been out against me. The paid public relations gangs of the administration
and some sympathisers 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 Dialogue 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 favour 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-publicised SURE-P
initiative of this administration? Another ill-conceived and fraudulently
implemented programme 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 organising 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.
Beninoise model
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.
June 12 debacle and
the charade
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 socalled Interim National Government, a clueless
outfit that lasted three months but drove Nigeria to the edge of ruin, until it
was overthrown by General Sani 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.
Jonathan’s epiphany
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, 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 organised by the sovereign people
of Nigeria, not one staged by the government. Government will figure in that
conference only as a facilitator, not as organiser.
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.
The sovereignty
question
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.
President’s Confab
deceptive
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 general insecurity, that this government
wants to open up another political front by hurriedly organising 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 that it can’t even hold its own
party together, how dare it even think it can organise 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.
The way out
If the conference must be held now, we must
return to the spade work already done by the Olusegun 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 eminent
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 honour 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 it. 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.
National Mirror
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