Nigeria may not be a failed state. However, it is performing the ablution of moving into that stage. Between those populating the President Olusegun Obasanjo administration (it’s quite a crowd in there), who see on the firmament a glorious dawn, a land where milk and honey would soon flow, on the one hand, and those calling for a thorough restructuring of the Nigerian nation, who also form a crowd on their own, they see different things. Where the former sees milk and honey at the end of the tunnel, the latter sees chaos, disaster and all the ingredients for melancholy.
The irony in all of these is that whereas Nigeria’s President Obasanjo is the one graciously hosting the negotiation talks on Daffur, the wretched and endangered western part of Sudan, because of its humanitarian catastrophe, Nigeria is herself dotted with such metaphoric expressions of Daffur.
There is a sudden resurgence in the call for a Sovereign National Conference. And what happened in most parts of South Eastern Nigeria last Thursday, August 26, 2004, is another way of ventilating desires and aspirations. MASSOB was able to demonstrate that the Nigerian people still have an idea of what is good for them and not what one president insists is the only option, by ensuring that shops did not open for business in the East. Even businesses owned by some people of Igbo extraction based in Lagos did not open last Thursday. It was also on a day when even Olabode George, a retired naval commodore and National Vice Chairman, Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, was suggesting that a national conference would not be a bad idea afterall.
Although Pa Anthony Enahoro, the man who moved the 1953 independence motion as its arrow-head, and Nigerians United for Democracy, NUD, had called for memoranda from Nigerians on how best to go about convoking a national conference, the type of response which ought to have greeted such an engagement remains mixed.
While those in government today are aversed to the need for the restructuring of Nigeria, with the argument that there is a government in place, the question being asked is: How is the government coping with and handling the multi-faceted socio-economic and political problems created by the defective nature of the Nigerian state?
In present day Nigeria, might a sovereign national conference be?
The question could be regarded as a stupid one on two sides of a coin and whichever way it is viewed.
Professor Julius Ihonvbere, Special Adviser to President Olusegun Obasanjo on Policy and Programme Monitoring says those agitating for a national conference are making a stupid request. According to him, “we made that demand on the military because (the military administration) was illegitimate.”
On the other hand, is it not equally stupid to continue to waste national resources on a system of administration that is flawed both in concept and in practice? It is to this that NUD, an umbrella body of professionals, labour, political parties, academics and leaders of ethnic nationalities, is also responding that the stupidity of a denial for a national talk shop in the face of glaring anomalies in the Nigerian polity, rests in the fact that the military government which Ihonvbere said is illegitimate, is the same body which created the 1999 Constitution which the present administration is using.
In truth, the Nigerian state, as it is presently constituted, is a threat to itself.
The devolution of powers which the military sought to engender by creating more states, in the warped belief that it would bring government closer to the people, was engendered more in the breach rather than its observance.
Since even the First Republic when the Mid-West Region was carved out of the Western Region, the creation of 12 states, then 19, then 21, 26, 30, and now 36, has only succeeded in making a mockery of what true and progressive devolution of powers ought to represent.
Apart from the MacPherson constitution which allowed for a certain degree of participation by the people, as well as the independence constitution which started from the provinces and then to the regions, which in turn enumerated powers to the central government, Nigerians have not really had the opportunity of having an autochthonous constitution, one which is derived from the free and fair will of the people of the country. The prefix to the 1999 Constitution, “We the people...”, is nothing but a fraud.
In a polity where the fundamental level of governance, the local government, is subsumed by the state, which is itself subsumed by the Federal Government, does not present a tantalising prospect for development and progress.
There are so many problems on ground and one of them starts with the federating units: What, actually, should constitute a federating unit? Should it be the states or the geo-political zones? What should be the basis of relationship between those units and the centre? In terms of resources, how should it be controlled and who controls what?
Even as President Obasanjo continues to insist that he does not understand what those demanding for national conference are talking about, Nigeria is today littered with a plethora of ethno-religious conflicts. Unfortunately for him, the number of lives lost in those clashes since 1999 when he took over far outweighs the number of deaths recorded since 1979 when he handed over to a civilian administration. And while some would quickly point to the Maitatsine riots and the 1983 clashes after the elections, there have been two Kadunas, three Kanos, Odi, Lagos, Junkuns Vs Tivs, Jos and many others.
The North, as represented by the leadership of the ACF had been known to voice its opposition for a national conference, but there had been a palpable shift in position since late last year on the desirability of a national conference.
Also recently, Vice President Atiku Abubakar suggested that the long standing position of government against a national conference may begin to shift when he revealed that government also recognises the need for Nigerians to talk.
Those calling for a national conference are not idle.
The South-South zone has been (and is still) boiling. The Oodua Republic, while not making too much of a noise is engendering a common front with the seeming accord between the Yoruba Council of Elders (YCE), and the Afenifere. Even its joint investment group, the Oodua Group, is a government unto itself as it provides for virtually everything government is expected to provide for a people.
The Middle Belt, especially its eastern flank has been an embarrassment to top government officials who hail from that part of the country on account of the crisis in that region.
In this situation of quasi failure, why shouldn’t the people come and reason together?
