₦airaland Forum

obynzo:
Bros Wikipedia is always edited by people. Please come up with undisputed proof and not wikipedia that i can just open and edit to suit my beliefs

Check this.

https://www.africabib.org/rec.php?RID=059397918

obynzo:
Bros you are a pathetic liar. How did Zik scatter NYM in 1938 when he just came back from the US at that time and established the West African pilot. Zik was even the Secretary of NCNC under Herbert Macaulay. Ahhhhhh!!!!!! you people should fear God with your lies.

As expected, the revisionists are first to accuse others of lying. The screenshot below ascertains that Zik returned in 1937 and not 1938.

Then the link below proves that Zik was an NYM member and even mobilized Igbos to join it

https://www.africabib.org/rec.php?RID=059397918

johntolu:
Thank you sir, for taking the time to summarize the evil, which the Igbo race caused the Nation, Nigeria.

Ironically they would be the ones to easily point accusing fingers at every other tribe and leave out their own political forebears who actually put them and indeed the whole Nigeria in this huge mess. Very funny people.

Muna4real:
Because they taught that it would become a country like others. Not knowing that it was a potential abattoir

So you mean that even the pogroms targeted at Igbos in Jos and Kano in 1945 and 1953 respectively over the most trivial of issues couldn't convince Igbos that Nigeria was already a huge abattoir and would so remain?

melodyogonna:
Leaving the fact that you're trying to blackmail Igbos for what one person did aside, how do you expect Zik to know what would happen decades later? I'm sure he had his reasons and expectations, things that never worked out as imagined. As I said earlier in the thread, the future is always a gamble

There is what is called foresight and being realistic. A proverb also says that the morning shows the day meaning that you can actually predict the future to a high level of accuracy based on the events of the present. The events back then clearly pointed to a very dark and bleak future and Azikiwe himself and Igbos knew it but their ulterior motive took the better of them. With Northerners already killing Southerners in Kano and Jos over the most trivial issues, what more evidence did any sensible and honest person need to infer that Nigeria had no future and one-Nigerianism was a misleading doctrine?
Aren't we Southerners including your very self currently asking for dissolution of the union because we can see and infer from the present insecurity and lopsidedness in appointments by the FG that the future is scary? So quit this line of defense for Azikiwe's folly and Igbos' tacit support for his misadventures back then.

nku5:
I dont accept that he seized power. It should be to Ironsi's credit that he didn't immediately unify the civil service. He first went on tours round the country trying to unite the country and to tell
everybody his plans. The only people that opposed it were the northern elders.

After all the chaos in the country. From crisis in the Western region with operation wetie and the thousands of people burnt to death, the Awolowo affair, the Tiv riots, the January 15 coup by junior officers etc He just made the best decision he could think of at the time. But Gowon had no business dismantling the regional structures and abolishing resource control. In terms of raw and ready revenue the South West and South South were the ultimate victims. Yet they (especially South West) can never agree that Gowon finished them

Normally civilians don't ever on their own relinquish power to the military. Rather the military always forces power out of the hands of civilians. Go and read Richard Akinjide's account on how Ironsi took power from the politicians through duress.

Then per your second claim, you mean the civilian populace agreed with him to unify the civil service? There is even a chronological defect in your narrative above. Ironsi was killed on the 29th of July during a tour around the regions after he had promulgated his decrees earlier on on the 24th of May. So your claim that he visited the regions to consult with the people over his plans to unite the country through his decrees is illogical. How could he have been traveling round the country in July for consultation on decrees he had already made two months prior to that time?
Where on earth does consultation come after action?
The truth is that no region agreed with whatever plans he had except may be his own Eastern Region and for obvious reasons. If his decrees and plans had gone down well with the people he wouldn't have even needed to go on a tour trying to convince them. No one went on any tour around the country to convince the populace to accept the independence constitution when the delegates brought it from London in 1957. Likewise no one ever went on tour to convince Nigerians on the restructuring we now ask for. Certain things are just natural and you don't need to convince people about them before they accept it.

If Ironsi had never taken power for himself illegally, Gowon wouldn't have later become head of state let alone have any business allegedly dismantling the regions as you assume. Ironsi set a bad example as leader of the Army and his inferiors followed suit.
When a father smokes hemp and his son takes after him, you blame the father who set the bad example and not the son who merely copied him.

melodyogonna:
lmao, if you think the Fulani agenda to conquer every territory down till the ocean started after 1960 then we have nothing more to discuss

You are mixing up two different eras. We all know that in the pre-colonial era the Fulanis, just like every other tribe, were on an expansionist drive to conquer other tribes and expand their empire. That was the time of Uthman Dan Fodio. It was a primitive and barbaric era and no tribe was innocent of such drive for conquest of others. But in the colonial era, Western education and modernization came and indegenous African people began to shed those primitive tendencies and began to imbibe the notion of nation building through democratic means. Ahmadu Bello became the leaders of Fulanis in Nigeria in this era but believed strongly that his Fulani tribe had no business being part of Nigeria because they feared domination by Southern tribes, and of course he and his tribe had their right to such belief. But the likes of Azikiwe criticized them for openly expressing such right and used the British to compel them into accepting Nigerian citizenship reluctantly but on the condition that their Northern Region be given undue advantage and Azikiwe agreed. It is their use of this undue advantage that we now interprete as a quest to conquer the South. It was all Azikiwe's and Igbos fault. If you Igbos had allowed them opt out of Nigeria as they wished, would we have been having to contend with their conquest quest today?

nku5:
This is just sophistry. Have you even seen Decree 34?

1. A military regime by nature is a Unitarian entity.

2. Most importantly, Ironsi retained administrators to govern the regional spaces and did not hijack resource control. Gowon did exactly the opposite with Decree 14. Shikena

If you insist that a military administration is unitarian by nature then you have to explain how come Ironsi was able to run a federal military government for up to four months before he decided to convert to a unitary one? Why didn't he just convert to a unitary Government immediately he snatched power on the 17th of January?
If a military administration is unitarian by nature then why castigate Gowon for allegedly creating states and killing resource control? Why also blame and accuse all the other military administrations like those of Murtala Mohammed, Obasanjo, Buhari, IBB, etc of further entrenching unitarianism? If Ironsi's centrifugal policies could be excused on the grounds of military administrations being naturally unitarian, why then should same defense line not be extended to all his successor military regimes' further entrenchment of unitarian decrees? Is what is good for the goose not also good for the gander?

Meanwhile Ojukwu's proposals at Aburi were all about an extremely Confederate structure to be overseen by the military. So if your argument that military governments should be naturally unitarian is anything to go by, then don't you think Gowon was therefore right to have reneged on Aburi Accord.

naijainreverse:
Blame Awolowo for that. His tribalism is why they had to align with the north. Zik wanted to unite the south as one entity where all southerners could play but AWOLOWO with his tribalism killed this

Awolowo was a consistent and consummate federalist and federalism is, in principle, a system which seeks to lawfully allow every tribe however small to have the power to govern themselves and decide their destiny within a multi-ethnic society. So federalism naturally has the trappings of tribalism and a badly educated person like Zik and his cheerleaders like you would easily mistake a federalist for a tribalist. Ironically your likes want a return to federalism today and at the same time claim to want and end to tribalism. See how delusional you can be? If Awolowo was a tribalist for not allowing you land grabbers take over his region while you secured yours for yourselves, then your dictionary must have come from the moon. Why was Azikiwe not satisfied with ruling his own home region where no one was contending premiership with him? Hypocrites!
Ironically the same Azikiwe who was posing as a detribalised citizen joined Igbo State Union ( a tribal association) and even accepted chairmanship of it. So who was fooling who about not being a tribalist? And what did Azikiwe's fraudulent nationalism bring onto you if not bloodshed, sorrow, lack of infrastructural development, marginalization, political destitution, etc which you have continued to wail about till eternity?

naijainreverse:
Big FOOL you are!. They had been fighting to conquer all nigeria and dip their quran in the sea before they were by the brits. ODE!

When did Nigeria come into existence and when did they allegedly start trying to conquer Nigeria? If you were not a crass ignoramus you would have known that Ahmadu Bello was the first person to describe Nigeria as the mistake of 1914 and began asking for de-amalgamation while your myopic and greedy Azikiwe was declaring publicly that the gods of Africa had given Nigeria over to Igbos to conquer and dominate.

naijainreverse:
Also If your IDIOTIC uncle awolowo had played politics like a gentleman where your ideas carry the day there would have been trust between east and west. He CAUSED ALL the problems in the south that is bedeviling us till this day! That's why he died like a rat.

Idiotic indomie generation member. The seeds of the distrust between the East and West was sowed by your father Zik in 1938 when he split NYM on tribal sentiments in protest over the loss of the NYM leadership election by his favoured candidate. The same fraudulent One-Nigeria originator would later abandon his own region and seek to rule the West where he was more or less an alien. He would as well play the spoiler role against Awolowo's attempt to get Yoruba areas of the Northern Region carved back into the West where they should have naturally belonged. I guess these atrocities of his were gentleman politics in your depraved reasoning of what constitutes ideals of politics and nation building.
While I am not from the West, I would ask you how Awolowo caused the problems facing the South today. I guess it was Awolowo that rejected secession clause, discouraged the North from seceding from Nigeria in 1954, inspired Ironsi to promulgate the infamous Anti-secession and Unification Decrees, crushed Isaac Boro's secession attempt, aligned with and gave power to the North over the South both in 1960 and 1979, etc. It is obvious you are a crass ignoramus on Nigeria's history. You obviously need to go back to the bush school you attended and start all over again from kindergarten classes.

ibietela2:
Boro died in the war, he was only imprisoned

Why imprison him for trying to exit the injustice Nigeria had become?

ibietela2:
He was the leader

He wasn't. Ifeajuna was. Even Adegboyega the author of the book you display here confirmed it in that book that Ifeajuna was the leader. Read the book yourself.
The coup is named Nzeogwu coup not because Nzeogwu architected or led it but because he alone was bold enough to come out and make a national broadcast after the coup had failed and his colleagues had consequently run into hiding out of fear.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vanguardngr.com/2009/12/%25E2%2580%259Cjanuary-15-1966-not-nzeogwu%25E2%2580%2599s-coup%25E2%2580%259D/amp/

melodyogonna:
Lmao, how can you just brazenly lie this way

Haven't you ever read that it was on the 11th of October 1960 that Ahmadu Bello allegedly made the declaration that the country is an estate of his forefathers? Did Azikiwe's aligning of his NCNC with Ahmadu Bello's NPC happen before or after October 11 1960?

naijainreverse:
Of course! They only planned to dip the Quran into the sea in the south by gisting with the south about it Ode!

Look at this idiot. Don't you know it was after your idiotic one-Nigeria chanting uncle Azikiwe gave them power on a platter of gold at independence that they got emboldened to want to dip the Quran into Atlantic Ocean?

humilitypays:
how you guys derive joy on twisting history just to show your hatred for Igbos beat my imagination.


Aguiyi Ironsi abolished regional government yet he was on a visit to Western Region Governor Fajuyi when he was killed; do you people ever have conscience in your dealings


God will shame you Yoruba liars someday if you don't desist from all these lies you guys have been spreading oh!


It was Gowon that abolished Regional Government and he is alive, you can go find out from him. Stop spreading lies just because you hate Igbos!

How many times do you want to be told that Fajuyi, Ojukwu, Katsina and Ejoor were not governors of regions but governors of groups of center dependent provinces as at when Ironsi was captured and killed by the Northerners he surrounded himself with?

favour32:
Nigeria can never be the same again.
Where a section of the country wants to dominate and enslave others.
Any country that a part wants to dominate others will never PROGRESS.It is not a curse but a fact. Check progressive countries and see for yourself.
The North wants to dominate without any productive inputs in everything.
The South will continue to look..
Despite this dominance,
is the North peaceful more than the South?

The North originally didn't want to dominate anyone. Please recall that the North didn't even want to belong to Nigeria ab initio. So how could Northerners have been planning to dominate a country they never wished to be part of in the first instance?

naijainreverse:
Dolt(means Idiat) because the coup plotters were not in control of the whole country. It succeeded in the north but Ironsi foiled it in the south.

How does this comment of yours bear relevance to the topic of debate here?

Let me even answer you all the same. Ironsi didn't really foil any coup. To foil a coup means to prevent the plotters from finally introducing military rule. Ironsi's foiling of the coup ended up in a military take over just exactly as the Nzeogwu coup would have done. So what difference did it make? Going by Nzeogwu's later interview with Ejindu, it would have even been better for Nzeogwu and co to take over power than having Ironsi taking over because Nzeogwu and co wouldn't have tampered with the constitution and would have later found a way to balance the killings hence the constitutional crisis which followed Ironsi's Unification Decree and the civil war it culminated in would have all been avoided.

omooba969:
Edo people are the lost tribe of India, rape is one of their hobbies.

And you left of blame the Akwa Ibom state which happens to be the home state of two out of the three rapists? See how hypocritic Nigerians are?

nku5:
Ironsi promulgated decree 34 to unify the civil service. This his press release you pasted did not abolish the regions. He retained regional administrators as everybody knows. Gowon's decree 14 explicitly abolished the regions and created states. There is nothing to debate here

I believe you did Government as a subject in SS2 or class 4 as the case might be. Didn't you read it in your textbook that the civil service is the engine room of Government through which the government generates revenues from resources within its jurisdiction, deploys same to pay salaries and sponsor capital projects, etc, thus resources are controlled and government power wielded through the civil service? So how could a decree which stripped regional governments of control and ownership of their civil services be said not to have equally taken away the power of the regions to own and control their resources? It is like your mechanic removed the engine of your car and he argued that he didn't damage the car since everyone can still see that the body is intact. Will you agree with him?

Dedetwo:
Have you seen or read about governance by the military directed through constitution instead of marshal law? Ironsi was not elected instead found himself in an unusual position by unforeseen circumstances. If you tow the line you seemed to express in the above post, it is safe to question your intellectual sincerity in this discuss. The early of morning on January 15, 1966 when young Nigerian soldiers struck to overthrow the civilian government was exactly the moment the constitution was suspended.

Are you for real? If the constitution got suspended the moment the January boys struck in the early hours of January 15, then it would mean that even Ironsi too stopped being Army GOC at that moment since the same constitution gave him that role and designation. So why then did Ironsi take over power knowing fully well that he had stopped being GOC courtesy of the suspension of the constitution by the five majors just few hours behind?

OfoIgbo:
If I am reading you right, I believe one of your major points is that the then REGIONS became PROVINCES. And not that Ironsi set about to create new provinces irrespective of the then regions. If I am right in my assumption of your point above, then we are definitely on the same page with regards to that point.

Now there is a whole world of difference between SUSPENSION and ABROGATION. That Ironsi suspended certain clauses in the constitution so that he can run a military-friendly government, does not in anyway mean that it is now permanent.

When the northerners planned and carried out the genocide of July 1966, if they were so aggrieved about Ironsi's unitary government, why didn't they immediately lift the suspension placed on the federation clause and ensuring it wasn't changed over the decades that followed?

Why did Gowon and the subsequent governments make permanent, the financial.castration of states, especially now that we are supposedly running a civilian democratic government?

Even Ojukwu asked for confederation in Aburi, yet Gowon and Awolowo-led Nigerian government rejected it in favour of the current unitary government.

Don't get me wrong, I have not one single respect for Ironsi. I see him like the current Enugu governor Ugwuanyi, who are just houseboy materials and have no business being in government.

That's why I'm not super enthusiastic about semi illiterates like Peter Obi or Orji Kali taking the Igbo presidential slot.
I prefer more versatile and highly educated individuals like Prof. Kingsley Muoghalu, Soludo or Ngozi Okonjo Iweala doing the honours, as they will be more proactive in avoiding political banana peels

To be nearer home, the beef which every genuine believer in true federalism has with Ironsi is not about his phasing out of the regions or otherwise. If anything, his breaking down of the regions into provinces would have been very much welcome by the minorities nationwide (who collectively make up the demographic majority when compared with wazobians collectively too) if he had allowed the hitherto existing regional autonomy trickle down to them. The minorities' agitation for their own regions wasn't just for the sake of being in their own physically separate region but for having the power to govern themselves and decide their own destiny hence what defeated the whole essence of Ironsi's structural alteration was not the creation of the provinces vis a vis the dismantling of the regions but his stripping the provinces of autonomy. Come to think of it: Ironsi created 35 provinces and people complained but today we have 36 states and people are happy and okay about it. What then makes the difference? Answer: the level of the autonomy of these states compared to Ironsi's provinces.
On the issue of suspension vs Abrogation, we all know that the military never later lifts any suspension they might make on any parts of the constitution till they are kicked out through a coup and another junta takes over promising to restore the previous status quo ante till it too gets kicked out and the vicious cycle continues. I didn't see how Ironsi would have been different from his successors in keeping to the promise that his decrees were temporary. Soldiers are not disciplined enough to taste power and on their own honour their promise to relinquish it without a serious resistance put up by the masses. Ironsi showed no sign of going to be an exception.
Your question as to why the Northerners refused to lift the suspensions Ironsi placed on certain parts of the constitution could be answered as follows:
First of all Gowon actually began a process of re-federalization by way of abrogating some Ironsi's decrees but had to halt it as a strategy to weaken Ojukwu in the face of the impending war meaning that had Ojukwu shifted grounds, the reversal of all Ironsi's decrees would have run full course and we would have been better for it today.
Please note that the likes of Awolowo, Enahoro and even Igbos like Philip Asiodu and the other one from Enugu who became minister in Gowon's cabinet all joined Gowon's government well after the Aburi Accord had hit the rocks and become abandoned so trying to put Awolowo and the rest in the Aburi Accord failure picture is misleading. If all these figures were in Gowon's government when Aburi summit held, then how come none of them was in attendance let alone being captured in the Aburi summit video which we see and watch online today?

It could be argued that Ironsi's successors all retained and even worsened the financial castration of states because they no longer trusted Igbos truly believed in the original structure of financial autonomy given the fact that Ironsi pioneered the financial castration when no one expressed dissatisfaction with it.
Please recall that Northerners twice sent a powerful delegation to ironsi to repeal his decrees thus leave the constitution as it was and rather focus on punishing the coupists and promising to support his Government for as long as it would take him to restore order and return Nigeria is civil rule provided he did those two things but Ironsi refused. Why was Ironsi so self opinionated and impervious to public opinion? Would you blame the North for never trusting Southerners to keep to solemn agreements thereafter?
Ojukwu's asking for confederation at Aburi was not as a matter of ideological belief or principles but an afterthought to which he had only circumstantial belief in. If, not wasn't the same Ojukwu publicly declaring support for Ironsi's unitary decrees just a few months before that time? Why did Ojukwu initially not believe in Confederacy during Ironsi's time in power?

GGirll:
Pls read n get your facts right Nzeogwu the architect of the whole pogroms was a delta man from south south...keep calling igbos till thy kingdom come.

You are very wrong. The chief architect of the ill-advised coup was Ifeajuna. Ojukwu made this abundantly clear in one of his memos. The logical analysis of the circumstances support Ojukwu's position on who hatched and led the coup and here is the logical question:
How could Nzeogwu who was thousands of miles away in Kaduna have been the architect and leader of a coup plot hatched and nurtured in Lagos?

Dedetwo:
He did not take away the regional civil services instead he streamlined the civil services and remove the powers of Emirs in the silly native authority. Ironsi's overthrow was orchestrated by Emirs in the northern region who thought their powers over native authority via Emirates were dashed.

Let us even assume but not concede that Ironsi did it exactly the way you painted above; the question becomes why he even chose to tamper with a constitution which nobody or the general public ever complained about. The crisis he purported to come and address by taking over power had nothing to do with the constitution. Nigeria was not in a constitutional crisis at that moment. The politicians who were battling for supremacy were doing so over the issue of which party should align with which party to form the government at the center. None of them claimed that the constitution was their problem let alone call on the military for intervention. Neither did the Southern or Northern politicians or even the general public complain about these Northern emir's or their Southern counterparts' constitutional recognition. So what exactly attracted Ironsi to the constitution if not for a dubious ulterior motive?

maak400:
I’m learning a lot from you boss.
At this point, I strongly want Nigeria to break up based on tribe/ethnicity so that the new nations formed will have a lot in common due to a shared culture and traditions.

Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, and other minority tribes should go their separate ways like the former Soviet Union.

I do not want restructuring or regional government because Nigeria shouldn’t have been amalgamated in the first place, it was a grave mistake by lord luggard.


What do you think?

Well, even though Lord Luggard made that selfish mistake, the likes of Ahmadu Bello, Tafawa Balewa, Enahoro and Awolowo later realized it was a mistake and therefore made proposals for correcting the mistake either by way of de-amalgamation or making provision for secession clause in our future constitution to give legal backing to whichever tribe or region would later want out. But Igbos under the leadership of Azikiwe, Ojukwu and Ironsi at different times thwarted all these efforts by killing the some of the proponents and instigating the British to jail them at different times. In a particular instance they even arrested and sentenced to death by hanging the first person to attempt secession physically (Isaac Adaka Boro).In addition Aguiyi Ironsi even went as far as promulgating Anti-secession Decree.
But today the tide had turned against them and rather than confess to all these evils they did in the past and apologise to other tribes for laying the foundation of an indivisible Nigeria, they keep playing the victim card for losing innocent lives in a war they caused. Who takes such people seriously? In actual fact they are only asking for secession now just because they have lost control at the center. Visit NL threads on the dissolution of Nigeria when Jonathan was in power and you will be shocked how much they spoke in favour of one-Nigeria like they did during the colonial era when it appeared to them that their gods would give them Nigeria to dominate post independence.

Omoslim26:
Why is no one stating here dat igbos were already being slaughtered in The North way before the Coup

The slaughtering of Igbos in the North and by Northerners prior to the coup seems not to attract any concern or sympathy because at independence, despite the benefit of hindsight created by those pogroms targeted at them in the North, it was the same Northerners Igbos preferred to align with in such a way that state power fell into their (Northerners') hands. I think that choice of alliance at independence convinced and till today convinces every other tribe that Igbos actually enjoyed being slaughtered in the North prior to independence and the 1966 January coup.

No normal human being gives raw state power to a person who oppressed and killed him at a time he hadn't even got state power.
No one can love you more than you love yourself.
Jesus only asked us to love our neighbours as ourselves and not more than our own selves.

OfoIgbo:
So were Ojukwu, Ejoor, Hassan and others no longer the governor's of the regions?

Was it Ironsi that removed resource control? This is the major characteristics of true federalism and we know resource control and regionalism were removed by Gowon, Murtala and Obasanjo

It seems you didn't read through my comment carefully. As at the day Ironsi was toppled and killed, Ojukwu, Hassan and Ejoor were in charge of groups of powerless and center dependent provinces and not regions.

This is what you don't understand about resource control; in SS2 Government textbooks the civil service is defined as the only lawfully recognized institution by which any government carries out her duties. It is the civil service that a government uses to generate revenues from the resources found within her domain and deploys it to pay salaries, sponsor capital projects, etc.... meaning that a state or region controls her resource through her civil service institution.
Now, after taking away from the regions their civil services through Decree 34, how exactly were the regions supposed to be able to continue generating and controlling their resources and utilizing same in keeping to their duties?
Once the civil service became centralized by Ironsi, all the revenues they generated from their former regional domains automatically started being remitted to the center. Ask yourself if a civil servants in a federal parastatal located in, say, Enugu today can generate revenue and remit it to the Enugu State Government without being dismissed mmediately if Abuja discovers.

Again, ask yourself how Ironsi would have been able to as military HOS continue paying the salaries of the now enlarged national civil service if the former regional civil servants kept on remitting revenues to the regional governors despite now being under the control of the national military Government. Where exactly on earth does that happen?

RevDesm0ndJuju:
.
They will never accept this bitter truth.

Ironsi was being teleguided by Igbo marxists .

Even if Ironsi were to wake up from the grave and confess to abolishing the regions, these his brothers here will still argue against him and accuse him of lying against himself to please the Abokis and Afonjas.

nku5:
No vex. First tell me how the 2014 confab was ill-conceived then I will answer

Here is how:

1. It wasn't his idea originally as it was the duo of Okurounmu and Nwabueze that had to visit him twice to talk into his head the need for restructuring through a confab.

2. By his own words he left no one in doubt that deep down in his mind he didn't share the belief that we needed a constitution review as he declared to the public that in his own personal conviction, he believed that our problem is not with the structure but is all about corruption which once killed, every other thing would magically begin to fall into place.

3. He added that he had to reluctantly midwife the 2014 confab as a democrat who should at least harken to the voice of the people even though he was personally against it.

4. In the area of delegation to the said confab, against the universal democratic doctrine of selecting such through a process by which the people should freely elect their representative delegates, he handpicked over 50% of the delegates and left the rest to the governors who merely used it as capital to reward their political loyalists, concubines and kinsmen considering the humongous monetary package voted for each participants by the FG.

Illiterate and dictatorial as Abacha was, he allowed delegation to the 1995 Constitutional Conference to be by election by the people in the various federal constituencies nation wide and never handpicked a single one of them but in 2014 we had a supposed civilian and PhD flouting democrat hand-picking delegates to a constitutional conference and yet you want me to believe that the confab in question was not ill-concieved?

5. Even in hand-picking delegates to the 2014 confab he still made another fundamental error by selecting individuals in representative capacity of entities like political parties, civil society groups, Nigeria Bar Association, Nigeria Army, Nigeria Medical Association, etc . Now, the irony here is that the issues which the confab was meant to address are all ethnicity based and had absolutely nothing to do with these artificial professional groupings hence delegation to the confab should have as well been ethnicity based hence the need to have allowed the people freely determine their own representatives through elections. We all know that the threat to Nigeria's existence revolves mainly around interethnic resentment and strife from Ijaw-Itsekiri wars, Fulani pastoralists vs Middle belt farmers, to Igbo vs Yoruba political antipathy, etc.
Lawyers and Doctors have never had issues as professional groups, neither have soldiers and political parties ever been involved in any battle for supremacy. So of what essence was it choosing delegates on behalf of these professionals bodies if not for the ulterior motive of merely using the confab to buy time for his 2014 reelection ambition?

6. On the opening day of the confab, Jonathan went there and in his opening speech advised the handpicked delegates to use 75% as the basis for consensus on any matter. Knowing how unrealistic such proposal was, the likes of Late Idris Kutigi tried to bring it back down to the normal universal 66.67% but met a brick wall as one Adamawa traditional ruler handpicked by either Jonathan or the Adamawa governor insisted that the president had himself set the basis figure hence any attempt to change it would get them to withdraw their participation in the entire process. The question now is this, we all know that even the universal democratic 66.67% (i.e. two third majority) basis for consensus is difficult to realize most times, then why should a PhD holder propose 75% if he truly wanted any consensus to be reached on any of the solutions that might be proposed to any of the nation's problems in the confab? Which known principle of democracy in the universe uses 75% as basis for consensus in any parliament? If he felt ⅔ majority was not democratic enough, then why couldn't he just propose 100% since he wanted to be a perfect democrat?

7. While the ill-concieved confab finally started going on Jonathan publicly declared that he would present the final report of it to the national assembly for onward action. Now, who back then didn't know that the Corrupt National Assembly was and will ever remain solidly in favour of the status quo hence never allow such report see the light of the day? Moreover the part of the country averse to restructuring has the majority in both chambers of the national legislature, so what will make a PhD holder wish to take the confab report to that national assembly if not for the wish that the essence of the confab be ultimately defeated in the end?
In the first instance it was the Nigerian populace (not the national assembly) that asked for the confab hence common sense and sincere commitment to it dictated that the report be taken back to those same masses for deliberation and adoption or rejection through a referendum or plebiscite.

8. Then the worst of all: Jonathan listed no-go-areas for the delegates, and those his no go areas happened to be the most potent of the very issues around which the impending doom for Nigeria revolved and yet you kept on believing he had good intentions behind that confab?
I fear who no fear you o!

nku5:
Do small research that primary school pupils can easily handle but you no gree. You want to blame Ironsi for your woes when it was Gowon that created states and dissolved the regions.

Instead of you to blame that brown toothed, stinking criminal Tinubu for refusing to participate in Goodluck Jonathan's Confab and work for re-establishing the regions you are here chasing shadows of dead men. Tinubu has enslaved his people for the next 100 years at least because he thinks fulani will give him presidency. The narcotics never clear from him eye but it will still clear

Can you kindly explain how Jonathan wanted to return Nigeria to the regional federal system through the ill-concieved 2014 confab?

OfoIgbo:
He did not abrogate regional government. The region's were in full force throughout his tenure. Ojukwu was the governor of Eastern region. Ejoor was the governor of MidWestern region e.t.c

It was Gowon and Awolowo that got rid of the region's, eliminated resource control, and created weak states so they can carry out the plundering of state resources.

So basically the southern minorities gained states but lost resource control. That's majorly why we are where we are

Wrong! Ojukwu, Fajuyi, Hassan and Ejoor being governors of subnational units under Ironsi's rule doesn't change the fact that Ironsi abolished the regions. Stop being clever by half. Here are the details of the issue:

Ironsi took power through the backdoor on the 17th of January 1966 and immediately proceeded to replace the democratic regions based structure he met in place with a military structure. So he appointed these mentioned soldiers over the regions first and operated a regions based Federal Military Government from that January 17 to May 24 of same year... meaning he ran a military controlled regional system for the first four months and seven days of his six months tenure. Then on the 24th of May, he issued a raft of centrifugal decrees by which he dismantled the regions and by his own pronouncement converted from federal military government to national (Unitary) military government whereby the regions were broken down to powerless provinces headed by the same military governors who were now ordered to be reporting to the military head of state (Ironsi himself) at the center henceforth. At this point the civil services of the regions had been unified and placed 100% under the control of the just created national (unitary) military government. This was why it was at that point in time that Governors Hassan and Ejoor began to complain against Ironsi.

So beginning from May 24, the military governors to the exception of Ojukwu, were forced against their wish and will by Ironsi to start ruling over groups of weak and powerless groups of provinces and not regions. This continued till July 29 that Ironsi was toppled and killed hence as at when Ironsi died the regions were no longer in existence. It was the coming of Gowon that saw a partial reversal to autonomous regions first followed by a breakdown of those semi-autonomous regions into semi-autonomous states. Get it now?