Nigeria's Sovereign National Conference
Cosmetic Elitist Protection or Populist Radical Rethinking?
Complied and titled by the editor from a debate on Adeyinka Olarinmoye's Facebook page
There are some fatal errors in respected Olisa Agbakoba's postulation. The most important being the rococo explanation of how legal teeth could be given the new constitution after validation by a referendum by invoking the special legislative powers of the National Assembly.
This is too elitist, too anti-people, even less than reformist not to talk of unrevolutionary.
The SNC, the way we perceive it, is a revolutionary process of total break with a self destructive, anti-democratic, neocolonial past.
It is meant to empower the people and the various nationalities in Nigeria, either within Nigeria as a single entity or in separate nations.
It is not about papering over issues or sweeping the most important issues in the life of the people under the carpet all in the name of unity.
It must also be able to focus on the real issues of political economy.
Macroeconomics, the wealth of nations, is very important.
It is not enough to talk about fiscal federalism.
The distribution of wealth amongst all classes and strata of society matters.
And this is the [core of ] politics.
Like I said somewhere else, we must be ready to jettison Jonathan's idea of Papapa Conference (Quick-fix conference).
We must be ready to embrace a more robust, more rigorous, more enduring, purgative and productive idea of a conference.
We can not begin to seriously talk about a conference getting off the ground until this intellectual battle, a battle between a correct idea that sees the conference as a popular struggle and that which sees it as a mere elitist intervention meant to stabilise a foundering ruling elite, has been fought, lost and won.
Adeyinka Olarinmoye is a scholar in sociology and cultural studies, an academic at Lagos State University and an active politician
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