Political calculations ahead of the 2015 general elections have done little to appease those clamouring for a sovereign national conference. EMMANUEL OBE writes on a recent meeting of statesmen with their minds fixed on the convocation of such a conference

While the rest of the country was agog with events leading up to 2015 general elections, a group of elder statesmen gathered at Enugu, the capital of the defunct Eastern Region to brainstorm on the fate of Nigeria as a corporate entity.

For this group of Nigerians, stories about merger arrangements being made by leading opposition political parties did not seem to be an issue. They did not even bother about the seeming disintegration of the All Progressives Grand Alliance that enjoyed an enviable position as the political platform of the Igbo speaking people of the South-East for over one decade.

Most of those who gathered at Enugu came in from all over the South East with a few elder statesmen from the South West and the South-South.

At the end of the day, they appeared convinced that holding a sovereign national conference before the 2015 general elections is a step Nigerians should take to put the country on a solid footing for a stable political future.

The 14 th anniversary celebration of the Igbo Youth Movement, with the theme, “National Conference before 2015 Elections, Only Roadmap to a Truly Greater Nigeria” provided the platform for most of the statesmen to suggest a way forward for national growth.

The National President of IYM, Mr. Elliot Ukoh, opened the convention with the declaration that a Sovereign National Conference was vital for the survival of Nigeria as one indivisible nation.

He said though the Igbo youths believe in one Nigeria, that belief can only find genuine footing within a restructured polity. This, he said, was urgent.

Ukoh said, “I want to make it very clear that we so much believe in Nigeria, but what we are saying is that the country must be restructured. For such restructuring to be done, we believe that a national conference is inevitable, I don’t know why they are delaying it.”

A former governor of Anambra State, Dr. Chukwuemeka Ezeife, could not agree more. “I agree with IYM that Nigeria must have a national dialogue. If not for anything else, after 100 years of our existence, we should be able to talk about ourselves, we will remain together but we have to understand ourselves,” he said.

An eminent lawyer from Benin, Mr. Solomon Asemota (SAN), said, “The Constitution we are operating now is very defective. Even the National Assembly has agreed to that and that’s why 60 areas have been short-listed for amendment.

“The constitution gave us the right to vote but no corresponding right to be voted for, rather political parties have right to be voted for. So, to have a credible election demands that we have a people’s constitution. Also, I am asking that there should be a national conference before the election is very valid.”

Prominent constitutional lawyer, Prof. Ben Nwabueze, said convoking a national conference was long overdue, stressing that there were so many variables indicating that Nigeria is a failed state and only a national conference could bring Nigeria back.

He said, if proactive steps like holding a national conference before the 2015 general elections were not taken to check the impending danger, the country might be heading for the rocks.

Nwabueze, who said the nation’s problem was so deep, also wondered whether the current merger of main opposition political parties by political leaders in the country was capable of routing the monstrous ruling Peoples Democratic Party.

Nwabueze said the country was already manifesting all the attributes of a failed state and equally joined his fellow elder-statesmen to call for an immediate convocation of a national conference.

“This country is on the verge of becoming a failed state. There are so many failed states in Africa and Nigeria is on a the verge of getting that status.

“Before now, we didn’t know about kidnapping, but it has become a way of life. Did we know about bombings before? But today, churches, schools, offices are being bombed on daily basis; the worst is that the bombers are not coming from outside the country, we are bombing ourselves.”

The former Secretary General of Ohaneze Ndi-Igbo, the apex Igbo socio-cultural organisation, said a nation that could not guarantee a credible election was a failed state.

He said, “In 2003, 2011 we had no credible elections, yet we are talking about democracy. A country that cannot secure social and economic rights for her people is a failed state. Read chapter 2 of Nigeria’s constitution and you will understand what I am talking about; they are not leaders but looters.”

Corruption, he said, was another disturbing issue bedeviling the country:

While expressing sadness that the masses are suffering and living in abject poverty, he lamented that National Assembly members had all kinds of allowances running into millions of naira.

“Come out and tell me if in all these, this country is not on the verge of a failed state?” he asked rhetorically.

He said to move away from the current situation, a national conference should be organised very quickly, emphasising that the conference should not be seen as a way to destabilise Nigeria.

Nwabueze said, it is for us to come together and deliberate; it will lead to peace; it will lead to a constitution whose source of authority is the people, we can’t have any substitute for the people. We are serious about it, we are working to achieve it and we shall succeed.

However, the Special Adviser to the President on Inter-Party Affairs, Senator Ben Obi, said President Goodluck Jonathan and indeed the Federal Government were not against a national conference, but spoke of the need for the agitators of such a conference to organise themselves and articulate their positions with both the president and the National Assembly.

Obi said, “We’ve all agreed to a national conference but at this time, we should be able to go beyond calling for a national conference and initiate action towards realising it. Even the president himself has never said he is opposed to the conference, but we need the right calibre of men and women to go to Abuja and demand from both the president who is heading the executive and Senator David Mark who is heading the legislature on the need to convoke a national conference.

“We must move towards solving the problem. Let it be said that there is an eminent delegation demanding the conference; by then, the ball would have been firmly played into the court of the executive and the legislature, who of course are the proper authorities to convoke such a conference.”

Obi called on Nigerian youths to take up the challenge of pulling the nation out of its present crises by not only refusing to be used as thugs by politicians during elections, but also to ensure that only people with credible and verifiable integrity are elected into positions of authority in the next election.

He said, “President Jonathan has put in place machinery that would help in conducting credible elections in the country. That is why today, votes are counting. We tried it in Edo, it worked; we tried it in Ondo, it worked. It will be tried in Ekiti and Osun where elections will come up in a matter of months. It is now left for you, the youths, to equally team up with the President and ensure that your tomorrow is guaranteed.”

A former Chief of Defence Staff, Lt. Gen. Alani Akinrinade (retd.) and Col. Joe Achuzie (retd.) said the situation in the country had gone so bad that the present leaders must go beyond rhetoric and seek solution to “what has obviously become a complex problem for the country”.

For Akinrinade, a nation state cannot be ruled by military fiat anymore, just as he attributed the problem of the country to the constitution which was written by the military.

He said efforts ought to be made to prepare an acceptable and workable constitution for the nation by the people themselves.

Achuzue, on his part, said the existence of many nations within the country was becoming a major threat to its continued existence as one nation, adding that the national conference would help in addressing the challenge.

He noted, “Unless we go back and convene a national conference where all the ethnic nationalities will say how they will co-exist, then there will be no movement forward. Something must be done to rescue the situation.”

According to him, though the country is said to be practising federalism, in practical terms, however, the country was being run as if there were some “perpetually vanquished people.”

Prof Mark Odu, in his paper titled, “Ndigbo: Identity crisis has ended!” said the time has come for only those that have something to offer the country to be voted into power “as the era of cash and carry politics is at an end and our identity born of our history should dictate our trajectory.”

He said Ndigbo had no choice but to stay within the Nigerian federation and move the country forward.

“They should just make up their minds about what is right, proper and in the general good of Nigeria and use their population to move Nigeria there. It is definite that our population is ample enough to guide Nigeria’s positive evolution,” he added.

While urging Ndigbo to embrace an enduring Nigeria irrevocably, Odu said, “Our population in the four winds guarantees us relevance for all time. No patchwork should be tolerated in the Nigerian project. It is either a country with fairness and equity based on right principles or we sue for confederation of parts.”

The foremost estate manager regretted that events of the past in the country had proved eloquently that Nigeria’s drift into chaos was caused by warped values which provided benefits for people that made little contribution to the development of the country.

He said that those that worked hard got little reward, while mediocrities were allowed to steal public institutions bankrupt. “Power elite arrive the portals of power outside the common will just as development in proper idiom has been frustrated by wrong principles of conduct,” he further lamented. He, however, said the trend could not continue without a popular revolt of the masses.

Insisting that Ndigbo have been short-changed by a nation they had contributed so much to maintain, Odu said, “In all their wave-making outside their homeland, they left little evidence at home. When displaced they returned to little infrastructure losing their resources in foreign land and starting afresh with bonds of ancestral cognateness and benefits of will to survive and guts to start afresh.”

Those who participated in the convention included, the Secretary General of the Patriots, Chief Mike Orabator; Col. Ben Gbulie; Amb. J. U. Ayalogu; Prince Emeka Onyeso; Chief Guy Ikoku; Prof. Felix Oragwu and Rev. Ukandu Ucheya.
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