"OHANAEZE as of now has not taken any position but if we are going to take a position, it won’t be the position which Obasanjo and his advisers are preparing for us. What we ask is that he must allow national conference which is a meeting of minds of various ethnic groups to take place”.
With these words, Igbo apex socio-cultural group, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, distanced itself from the national dialogue initiated by President Olusegun Obasanjo last Tuesday when he inaugurated a committee to work out its framework. But Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) and two other groups - Civil Rights Congress and Delta North Leaders Forum - welcomed the initiative and inauguration of the committee led by Governor Ahmed Makarfi of Kaduna State.
The secretary-general of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Col. Joseph Achuzia (rtd), who disclosed the position of the Igbo group, said at the weekend that rather than government initiating any process to review the 1999 Constitution, what it should have done was to abrogate all the constitutions produced for the nation by the military and restore the one that was dumped in 1967. “To tinker with the military imposed constitution, as it is now being done, shows we are not yet ready to face reality”, Achuzia said, pointing out: “If the constitution that was bequeated to us by our founding fathers is restored back to the people, the people will know that President Obasanjo is sincere and will be taken serious”.
He went on: “We feel that the various ethnic groups in what we call Nigeria will meet and dialogue because of the various changes which military intervention in our political life brought. The type of arrangement which Obasanjo and his advisers are trying to foist on us cannot be accepted. We are not asking him to re-write the constitution, what we are saying is that we don’t have a constitution since the suspension of the first constitution in 1967".
Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) and Civil Rights Congress (CRC), welcoming the setting up of the Makarfi panel on national dialogue, said last Friday that there was need for Nigerians to fashion out a new constitution that would protect their interests. Assistant National Secretary of ACF, Alhaji Inuwa Abdulkadir (Magatakarda) and the national president of Civil Rights Congress (CRC) Mallam Shehu Sani made this known in separate interviews with Sunday Vanguard in Kaduna.
Abdulkadir said that “people have been consistently clamouring” for a Sovereign National Conference (SNC) because of several abuses on the part of both the executive and the legislature pointing out that the average Nigerian feels very strongly about the need for the conference.
“The issue of SNC or National Dialogue... it is already on. People have been consistently clamouring for it... The fact of the matter is that so many things are wrong; so many things are not working well.
The system is not moving as it should; even the constitutional government itself. There are several abuses on the part of the executive, the legislature etc. for which Nigerians; the average citizen feels very strongly about,” the ACF assistant scribe said.
Sani spoke in the same vein, adding that “the truth of the matter is that Nigerians are saying that they need a Sovereign National Conference (SNC)” and that there would be “resistance from those in support of SNC” if their expectations were not met. “We need a way out of our corrupt practices. We need a way out of our institutional deceit. We need a way out of the bankruptcy of ideas in governance. We need to find a way in which this country will work and develop more. But if the resolution of the panel does not favour the convocation of an SNC, there will be resistance from those clamoring for it”, he added.
Also speaking on the issue, the chairman of Delta North Leaders Forum, Senator Nosike Ikpe, said the move for national dialogue was a step in the right direction. His words: “That is good politics for Obasanjo. It is a welcome development, it will lower the tension in the country, because when people have opportunity to talk, tension will come down. But, what will happen after that is another kettle of fish.
All along I have always said that all these agitations for sovereign or non-sovereign conference cannot go anywhere unless the government really wants to participate and to participate depends on the commitment of the man at the head knowing what he wants to get out of it. It is part of nation building, social engineering.
However, Ikpe, who claimed to be speaking on behalf of the Anioma people, expressed some reservations on the national dialogue initiative.
Said he: “My real problem on this issue is implementation, after dialoguing and resolution is taken, who will implement it, the talking group won’t implement it, they were talking about a group of Patriots who were trying to organize it (conference), they are not in a position too to implement; if the National Assembly does not want it, they cannot implement it; if Obasanjo does not want it, he won’t implement it; it is just a talking shop where people can talk and lessen tension".
