There appears to be a sense of foreboding in the proposed National Conference, as enunciated by President Goodluck Jonathan. The president’s Independence Day address, as it concerned the people’s conversation (as Jonathan also called it) is causing ripples among various segments of the Nigerian society.
No sooner had the president dropped the hint than the polity erupted with skepticisms and outright rejection. Governor Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso of Kano State dismissed the proposal as a waste of time. He said it would achieve nothing. Governor Muazu Babangida Aliyu of Niger State dismissed insinuations that the North was afraid of national dialogue. He said the region was prepared for the conference. Then came Sule Lamido of Jigawa State. He said his state would have nothing to do with the exercise. He is going for outright boycott.
With these vibes from a section of the North, many are tempted to think or feel that the region is ill at ease with suggestions, bordering on national dialogue. Even segments of the North that have managed to accept the idea are saying representation at the national conference should be on the basis of population. A section of the South responded to this quickly when it held that representation should be on the basis of ethnic nationalities and not population, in order to ensure a fair and equitable representation of the wishes and aspirations of all Nigerians.
A section of the South has also warned that there should be no “no-go-areas”. They want everything, every issue, to be placed on the table so that Nigerians can speak freely and dispassionately on and about them.
However, beyond the variations and vibrations on the issue, partisan politics is also taking its toll on the idea. The All Progressives Congress (APC) said it was suspicious of Jonathan’s intentions. It wondered why the president is floating the proposal at a time his presidency is wading through difficult times. If APC did not go far enough in its denunciation of the plan, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a former governor of Lagos State and a key figure in APC, went the whole hog. He has dismissed Jonathan’s proposed conference as sheer deception and divisionary. He also called it a “Greek gift”.
With these strident responses and reactions, we cannot but imagine that the conference foretells uncertain times for Nigeria. It was this fear of the unknown that Jonathan tried to douse when he inaugurated the 13-member National Advisory Committee of the National Conference. He said the conference would not negotiate the country’s integrity. This growing fear among   some Nigerians takes us back in time. Some Nigerians, for whatever reason, have always held that the unity of their country is not negotiable. Those who think this way are saying anything about Nigeria can be tinkered with except its oneness. Nobody has publicly confronted exponents of this point of view on the reason for their position. But one thread of thought seems to run through their imagination. They say and this has become a boring refrain, that Nigeria fought so hard to keep its unity and as such it must remain so. That is the argument. That is their overriding reason for their fanatical hold on Nigeria’s unity.
Recently, the President of the Senate, David Mark, reminded us of the indivisibility of Nigeria shortly before Jonathan’s proposal hit the airwaves. Apparently speaking from a vantage position of an insider, Mark declared his support for the National Conference in so far as it will not negotiate Nigeria’s unity. That was weeks before Jonathan’s Independence Day address.
All these point to one undeniable fact.  Nigeria appears to be a country afraid of its shadow. There is something about the entity that the people are either afraid of confronting or too eager to confront. From the vibrations so far, you can easily see Nigeria as an incongruous object.

Its image is distorted. While one segment of it craves for surgery that will give the entity a human face, the other does not want any operation that will give it a new look. While one section is ruled by anxiety in the entire frenzy, the other is governed by fear of the unknown. That is why the idea of the proposed conversation is unsettling the country. For one, it is one octopus that must not be confronted. For another, it is the ultimate nemesis that the country must face. Both situations constitute ominous times for Nigeria.
But why is Nigeria so jittery about itself? Why is it afraid to place a mirror before itself? Those who know the story of Nigeria will readily tell you that the country is squirming in discomfort because its foundation was laid on false grounds. The pre-war years saw a country founded on a tripod of North, East and West. But the arrangement was to face gradual erosion and ultimate extinction following the outcome of the civil war. With the death of the First Republic, the military became the new power brokers. They balkanised the country into states on the basis of North and South. Each section was given equal number of states.
But since it is the prerogative of the victor to always re-write history, subsequent state creation exercises saw the North, having an edge over the South. Today, the inequity has become institutionalised. Whereas the South has been struggling to achieve a balance, the North is scheming to even widen the gap.
But it is not only the structure of the Federation that suffered a jolt, every other index of nationhood was trampled upon. The revenue allocation formula was also commandeered by the military. From the original arrangement in which the regions controlled their resources and paid royalty to the Federal Government, the military, in the process of prosecuting the war, threw the arrangement overboard. By then, revenue accruing from oil had become substantial. The military rulers commandeered the proceeds and disbursed it arbitrarily. The civil populace, following years of military dictatorship, had lost its voice. It acquiesced to all that and the military had a field day.
Perhaps, the most contentious of them all is the issue of political dominance. The North, by the sheer fact that it was the major bloc that waged the war against the East, seized the reins of governance for so many years. Because the West played only a supportive role during the war, the North sidelined it and appropriated power at will. With time, it became the norm. It became almost axiomatic that the North must be in charge of political leadership. In fact, the North itself came to believe that it was its God-given right to rule the rest of the country.

When, therefore, power slipped out of its hands in the face of the overriding need to deal with the issues, arising from June 12, the North was still at ease with the new era. But its worry deepened when power, once again, slipped into the hands of a Southerner by sheer force of circumstance. Since then, the North seems to feel at every turn that the South wants to topple the apple cart. This may well be the perception of those Northerners, who are vehemently opposed to Jonathan’s National Conference. They are suspicious of the president’s intentions. They do not seem to trust this Southerner whom luck or chance or fortune thrust upon the stage.
Governors Kwankwaso and Aliyu may have been generous with their comment on Jonathan’s conference. At least, they are ready to give it a trial. But Lamido, their Jigawa State counterpart, will brook none of that. He will get his people to boycott it. By so doing, he will discredit the outcome of the exercise. That is how outraged certain Nigerians feel about the plan.
If the North is entertaining fears of a possible demystification, parts of the South, particularly the South-south geo-polity, feel that the conference will be the North’s ultimate nemesis. The South-south has, through Jonathan, been reminded of former president Olusegun Obasanjo’s National Political Reform Conference. The South- south was at its best at that conference. It pushed for a 50-50 control of oil resources that come from its region.

The North was vehemently opposed to it. After months of debates and walkouts, the conference approved a 17 per cent oil derivation principle for the region. But it never came to be because the conference ended in a fiasco. Obasanjo, the brain behind the conference, threw its decisions into the ash heaps of irrelevance because it did not accommodate his life presidency project. Now, the South- south is warming up for another showdown with the North over oil derivation. Whereas Obasanjo’s conference ended up being a one-agenda affair, Jonathan’s conference is likely going to be dominated by the same subject matter.
But there are even those who are looking at the extreme. These are people, who feel that the present structure of Nigeria should be tinkered with. Instead of the present 36-state structure, proponents of restructuring are interested in using the geo-political zones as the new federating units. This idea will be seriously canvassed by a section of the country. But if our experience, as a people is anything to go by, we can take it for granted that the North will squirm at this. Some elements from the North have had to argue that the region would not accept the geo-political structure because it balances the North and South of the country. This promises to be a potential source of heated debates and disagreements.
Essentially, every segment of the country is ruled by either anxiety or fear because of what it thinks it will gain or lose.  How these will play out lies in the bowels of time. But part of the consideration, contrary to fears in certain circles, will not include the dismemberment of the country. People will not go to the conference to canvass that. Dismemberment, if it must come, will not be achieved on the negotiation table. It will come through untold disruption and eruption. Jonathan’s conference, I believe, may not have any character or characteristic that will tend towards this.

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