This Day (Lagos)
OPINION - Let Obasanjo Hold His Conference!
January 17, 2005
Simon Kolawole
I could not believe my eyes. I had arrived office early that morning. My bunch of daily newspapers was handed over to me. There were different headlines – all of them informing us that President Olusegun Obasanjo had finally agreed that there should be a national conference.
It was reported that he had set up a seven-man, one-woman committee, headed by Governor Mohammed Ahmed Makarfi of Kaduna State. The committee was to work out the modalities and draw up the agenda for a national conference on political reforms. Obasanjo agreeing to hold a national conference? That must be some dry joke!
I soon discovered that the headlines were misleading. I don't know where people got the impression that this conference was going to be the equivalent or the imitation of the Sovereign National Conference (SNC) some activists had been asking for. I started hearing negative comments here and there. The pro-SNC groups started condemning the move. Most of them classified it as "grand deception". According to them, Obasanjo was just trying to create the impression that he had listened to the voice of the "people" at last. Whatever the case may be, the Makarfi committee set out to work and turned in its report in record time, without the usual Nigerian factor of endless deliberations because of the sitting allowances and other perks that come with "committeeships". Last Wednesday, the Council of State approved the report.
Of course, I found a lot of things curious about the latest development. To start with, the membership of the Makarfi Committee looked too much like an in-house panel of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). But we can easily ignore that. I still have other reservations, anyway. Why should the president alone have the power to nominate 50 delegates? PDP presently controls 28 out of 36 states of the federation. That means the president and PDP governors alone will nominate more than half of the expected 400 delegates. That is not a fantastic idea.
Before I proceed, I want to state very clearly that I don't believe that our most important and immediate need in Nigeria today is a national conference. I believe very, very strongly that the major problem facing millions of Nigerians is lack of food, shelter, healthcare, employment and infrastructure. And the monster responsible for these problems is corrupt, insincere and poor-sighted leadership. Nevertheless, I will be a fool to say we don't need political reforms too, but I know as a matter of conviction that if we get the leadership right, every other thing will begin to fall in place.
I have listened to the proponents of SNC over and over again and I get confused each time, trying to understand them In the days of General Sani Abacha, I used to support the agitation for SNC. I was made to believe it would solve all of Nigeria's problems in one blow. Somehow, I managed to sit back to assess the agitation and I realised that there are many questions to ask about the little details.
The pro-SNC activists advocate that there should be fiscal federalism. Every state should generate and spend its revenue and give a little to the central purse, as it was under the colonial government and the First Republic before we discovered oil. It is also being advocated that there should be state police and the governors should have powers over the police. One faction of the SNC community says we should go back to the old regional system – which means we would have six regions, based on the current geo-political arrangement.
A fundamental issue to be discussed, according to this group, is the unity of Nigeria. Should we continue as one? If yes, on what terms? Most of the "old-school" SNC proponents are Southerners who believed (and still believe) that the North was enjoying too much advantage in the federation. To them, if an SNC was convoked, the problems of imbalance and lack of fairness in the distribution and consumption of the national cake would be solved. Somebody even preached to me that if Nigeria could break up, all our worries would be over.
I have asked the pro-SNC activists many questions over time and their responses are always different. I asked: how would the delegates emerge? One said by the ballot. If so, then characters like Arthur Nzeribe would be members of SNC, since the proponents would not be able to pick representatives for the people. If by selection, who will choose? Will Wole Soyinka or Gbenga Daniel be given the power to choose delegates from Ogun State? Would Bukola Saraki or Mohammed Lawal pick the delegates from Kwara? Would Afenifere or Yoruba Council of Elders pick delegates for the Yoruba race?
Another question that always comes to my mind is: on what basis would the number of delegates be determined? If it is one per state, the North has 19, the South 17. If it is one per ethnic group, there are more ethnic groups in the North than the South. We usually say we have 250 ethnic groups in Nigeria. The South-west is essentially Yoruba, although the Badagry people may choose to have a different identity. That means two delegates from South-west. The South-east is one, and so we will have only one Igbo delegate. In the entire South-south, we cannot generously count more than 50 ethnic groups.
So while the South will have 55 delegates based on ethnic groups, Adamawa and Taraba states alone can make up that number. Kogi State has about eight ethnic groups: Igala, Ebira, Yoruba, Bassa, Ogori, Nupe, Oworo and Gwari. I can easily identify six groups from Kaduna: Fulani, Kaje, Kagoro, Kataf, Marwa and Jabar. I dare not try to count the ethnic groups in Gombe, Borno, Plateau, Bauchi and Nasarawa except I want to lose my bearing. And if representation would be determined on the population of each ethnic group, I don't know the census figure to be used.
A major flaw in the thinking down South is that they see the North as a monolithic, Hausa/Fulani set-up. What a mistake. There are hundreds of ethnic groups with distinct cultures, languages, customs and traditions. It is Islam that binds a lot of these ethnic groups together. But the average Southerner does not see things in this light.
Now, when the issue of self-determination is raised at the SNC, how would a decision be taken? By voting, I suppose. By whatever representation method adopted, the North should carry the day. I don't expect a Kanuri man or an Igalaman or a Kuteb man to vote in support of retaining oil revenue in the Niger Delta. I hope I am wrong. My guts tell me that no matter the perceived differences in the North, they know how to protect their interests better than the South. This is evident in the Resource Control suit recently instituted against the Federal Government by the 19 Northern governors in conjunction with some Southern states.
I have observed, over time, that the Northern governors meet, regularly, for two or three hours at the Arewa House in Kaduna. Once they make a pronouncement, they pursue it to a logical end. The Southern governors usually meet for three days and three nights. They meet with a lot of fanfare. They exhibit the best of fashion, drink the choicest wines and generally have a good time. They wear "abeti aja" caps, Kalabari tops and Urhobo wrappers. By the time the meeting is over, nobody remembers the agenda or the communique.
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