Crisis foretold: Rumble in the confab

– so loosely defined to describe any military or civilian administration with a northerner as the leader- were driven by the thinly veiled determination by those who stood to benefit from the call to abuse it (Power) once they acquired it.Today, barring any last minute change of plans, the National Confe-rence, controversially convened by President […]

– so loosely defined to describe any military or civilian administration with a northerner as the leader- were driven by the thinly veiled determination by those who stood to benefit from the call to abuse it (Power) once they acquired it.
Today, barring any last minute change of plans, the National Confe-rence, controversially convened by President Goodluck Jonathan, in the midst of protests from aggrieved stakeholders on the composition of the delegates, is set to vote on the Report of its Committee on Devolution of Power, which, assuming all went according to plans, was debated at the plenary session concluded yesterday.
Some of the key issues that could make or mar the overall outcome of the conference, include the resolutions passed for the creation of new states, inclusive of an extra one for the South-East region, the status of the Local Governments, State Police,  as well as the 50 percent derivation canvassed by the oil producing states, will all be decided.
The 50 percent derivation was earlier debated and rejected by the appropriate Committee of the Confab in favour of the status-quo of 13 percent for the oil producing states. Ordinarily, that should have put the matter to rest, but the northern delegates bargained without a not so mysterious document titled “The National Conference 2014: Terms of Agreement of the Six Geo-Political Zones in Nigeria,” which contained a provision for the 50 percent derivation earlier rejected at the Committee level. Earlier a minority report submitted to the leadership of the Confab by a member of the Committee Ms Annkio Briggs, representing the Niger-Delta, was also rejected at plenary.  
The curious document was smuggled into the Confab against its established rules and regulations.  As I write this, the leadership of the Confab is also said to be under serious pressure from certain quarters to ensure that all the recommendations contained in the document become a reality, while strenuous efforts were also intensified to divide the ranks of the Northern Delegates Forum (NDF) along religious and ethnic lines for the same purpose.
Ironically, the principal arrowhead fingered in the diabolical attempt to smuggle the controversial document into the conference is no other than Raymond Dokpesi, the Chairman of the Africa Independent Television (AIT). Dopkesi was for several years a protégé of a prominent northern politician Bamanga Tukur, the erstwhile Chairman of the PDP. Dopkesi’s impressive media empire also directly resulted from the deliberate liberalization of the communication sector, by another notable son of the North, in the form of the former military President Ibrahim Babangida.
All that, unsurprisingly count for nothing, in the scheme of the rapidly unfolding events, at the Confab. What should be of serious concern to all right-thinking Nigerians and democrats regardless of their creed, however, is the justified suspicion of the Northern delegates at the Confab that the appearance of the mysterious document is only the beginning of another grand conspiracy to amend, or re-write the 1999 Constitution using the decisions reached at conference as the platform!
I used the word ‘justified’ on account of the allegations against the leadership of the Confab on the serial breech of its procedural rules. For instance, why would its leadership opt for the voice vote on such important issues such as derivation, local government status, states creation, Land Use Act? Why were the contentious issues never subject to voting when they clearly failed to achieve the desired consensus in line with the provisions of Rule 10 of the conference? Is the leadership of the Conference unaware that whenever such issues are subjected to a voice vote, those of the 192 delegates selected from the north would definitely be lost among the 300 representing the south? Are those specific concerns alone, not sufficient grounds to suspect a hidden agenda in the entire process?
I dare to add at this point that were the President to be from the north, there is absolutely no way the south would have accepted such lopsided representation at such a Confab intended to shape the common political destiny of all Nigerians. Figures available everywhere on the last national headcount conducted in 2006 indicated that the Southeast, Southwest and South-South regions of the nation had 64,908,376 or 46.36% against the 73,599,965 or 52.57 % for the North-Central, North-Eastern and North-western zones of the country. How then did the conveners of the conference arrive at such disproportional representation for the north in its entirety?     
The status-quo explains why suspicions of a hidden agenda have beclouded the confab since its inauguration. And the fact that the president failed to address those specific concerns, even when appropriate representations were made to him by concerned stakeholders, including one led by the Sultan of Sokoto, His Eminence Sa’ad Abubakar, only served to dispel whatever lingering doubts there must have been on his partiality in the entire enterprise.
It is either the President shares the nonsensical view often peddled by mischievous politicians from the south that cows, goats, and other domestic animals were counted among the census figures returned for the North since the nation’s independence, or he is part and parcel of a grand conspiracy to re-write the constitution in the image of Ben Nwabueze who authored a  ‘draft constitution’ from his bedroom and had the effrontery to urge that it be  accepted as the blue-print for our new constitution!
Nwabueze’s ‘constitution’ are of course derive from the jaundiced views he shares with several others that the 1914 amalgamation of the Northern and Southern protectorates bestowed unfair political advantages to the North. Given all that has transpired at the Confab so far, particular the alleged role of its Deputy Chairman Bolaji Akinyemi, we cannot swear that his views are not shared in Aso Rock!  
We can hardly discount the fact that a huge number of the delegates at the confab, including several from the North, are well-known acolytes of the President. The fact must also be underscored that they were never elected. They represent neither me, nor millions of ordinary Nigerians, except the few driven by the rumble of their stomachs.
The entire process was flawed from the onset. The same people, who lampooned the 1999 constitution for being a product of the military, shamelessly saw nothing wrong with the back-door attempt to re-write the same constitution using unelected delegates handpicked by a supposed democratically elected president. And the fact that there is even an attempt to amend or re-write the constitution in the manner contemplated suggests that he has nothing but contempt for the National Assembly. The military at least spared us the deceit.
Stripped of all pretentions, what is presently manifesting at the National Confab is the outcome of the deliberate abuse of power and its sundry privileges and must be seen as such by all right-thinking delegates and Nigerians whether they hailed from the North or the Southern part of the country. And if one of the stated objectives convening the conference at such enormous cost was to solidify the unity of Nigerians, it has already failed given the avoidable crises it has already generated.
Unless we are also economical with the truth, this Confab has been one of concealed plots, and sub-plots, all intended to further aggravate the precarious political and economic condition of the north. Its composition and the subsequent breech of procedural rules cannot guarantee equity and justice among all Nigerians.
If the South-South with its lesser population and which already enjoys disproportional allocations from the federation account, along with a dedicated Ministry and the NNDC, is allowed 50% derivation it craves, the direct opposite consequence will be massive reduction in revenues to the North which is confronted with rampaging insurgency caused in part by the excruciating poverty in the region. The situation will be worsened if the Local Government administrations are also scrapped as suggested by the southern delegates.
These are only some of the reasons why I opposed the confab from the onset.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with Nigeria in its present form. Indiscipline, endemic corruption, and the selfishness of our elites count among our biggest problems.  These are the issues Nigerians must tackle with the appropriate vigilance and vigour. We can start by consigning the outcome of the current confab to the dustbin of history where it belongs.
This Confab is a disgraceful abuse of executive privilege and was conceived in bad faith. All rational Nigerians must deny it of the legitimacy it desperately craves.