The Makarfi Committee on political reform
SIR: The Ethnic Nationalities Forum considers President Olusegun Obasanjo's eight-member Committee on Political Reform under Governor Ahmed Makarfi of Kaduna State as another diversionary plan aimed at frustrating the popular demand for a Sovereign National Conference.
Given Obasanjo's consistent opposition to the idea, and in view of the well known position of Makarfi and his primary constituency against a national conference, it is obvious that Obasanjo's U-turn follows precisely the pattern by the late dictator, General Sanni Abacha, in setting up a government-controlled constitutional conference, under which the Obasanjo administration is now operating.
We of the Ethnic Nationalities Forum have come to the conclusion that as a result of the instruments of government which the military, of which Obasanjo is a prominent member had introduced into our system, Nigeria had gone off the track of a truly federal state, the rule of law and civilised governance. Hence the flagrant abuses of human rights, ethnic conflicts, undemocratic electoral systems and irresponsibility in governance at all levels.
We make bold to predict that the future of Nigeria as a well-structured federation such as other respected federal countries like the United States, Canada, India and Australia, does not lie with President Obasanjo's spurious reforms.
Nigerians must recall that our founding fathers crafted for us a reasonable federal constitution which worked well for our growth and welfare until one ethnic nationality interfered with the autonomy of another. This interference has worsened at every stage of military rule which had de-structured the country into a pseudo-federation with a central control.
We of the Ethnic Nationalities Forum believe that Nigeria is not just Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba, and must no longer be seen as such. We have no confidence in the proposed political reforms of a president who had been taking deliberate steps to incapacitate the federated states as demonstrated in his revenue allocation and budgetary postures, in his suspension of local government revenue allocation to Lagos State, and in his undermining the security of both Anambra and Plateau states.
We believe that Obasanjo should be more concerned with his primary duty as a president, which is the judicious management of the nation's resources and revenue that will give the nation real economic growth and public welfare. If he has faced this assignment squally and stemmed the unabated spate of corruption in the country, the nation would have moved forward and be much better off today.
Only a national conference in which every ethnic group no matter how minor is represented and its views accommodated, can put Nigeria on a path of political stability, justice and progress. This is what we are determined to pursue before Nigeria goes into another round of fraudulent elections in 2007. Unless we all rally round the call for a Sovereign National Conference, dictatorship and ethnic domination of Nigerian will continue.
Jide Akinbiyi,
Publicity Secretary,
For: Ethnic Nationalities Forum,
Lagos
