Matters arising from National Conference
While moving an amendment to the motion mandating the Conference leadership to work on the final report, Adamu Maina Waziri, with the unanimous endorsement of the delegates, urged the Conference Secretariat to keep faith with and reflect fully and accurately all the resolutions and recommendations accepted by Conference and as contained in the Votes and […]
While moving an amendment to the motion mandating the Conference leadership to work on the final report, Adamu Maina Waziri, with the unanimous endorsement of the delegates, urged the Conference Secretariat to keep faith with and reflect fully and accurately all the resolutions and recommendations accepted by Conference and as contained in the Votes and Proceedings that were formally adopted.
The key resolution, indeed the game changer, adopted that morning was the proper consideration and designation of Vol III of the draft report as “proposed amendments to the 1999 Constitution’.
With that feat accomplished, not a few have posed the pertinent question: are there any matters arising there from? From the perspectives of a delegate, I wish to point out, in a synoptic but not exhaustive form, the following, as being some of such matters:
1. As one perceptive delegate, Kabiru Yusuf in his column of 18/08/2014, observed, the ball is now back where it belongs: the court of the Presidency. We, as unelected but dignified advisory committee set up by executive fiat, have spoken. Being proposed amendments to the constitution, all our resolutions of constitutional nature would need to be tabled before the National Assembly (NASS) for eventual processing and promulgation in accordance with the stipulations of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999. Those that pertain to legislative realm would similarly need the imprimatur of the NASS to become effective. However and given the political will, the President can, without much ado, begin to implement policy proposals contained in the report.
2. While filling a form yesterday to sign up for the National ID card, a delegate genuinely wanted to know if he could enter one of the new States “created” or proposed for creation by the Confab, as his state of origin. By way of a reality check, he was advised to tarry a bit and stay with the existing entity till the State Creation exercise has received the blessing of communities being lined up for mergers and demergers and Nigerians have given the exercise their blessing. As tempting as it was, the bemused delegate from Yauri had to settle for Kebbi and not Kainji, at least for now.
3. The adoption of State Police was not a southern triumph over the northern irredentism as some were led to believe. Given what had occurred in Kano in the days of Muhammadu Sanusi’s II accession to the throne in the form of abuse and manipulative deployment of federal police to frustrate popular will, espousing the idea of community policing got a bonus support from unexpected quarters. Yet, the details of what rule of engagement will regulate the relations of the multiple police forces to be established by States between them and with the federal police is a delicate matter to be negotiated and worked out and incorporated in the Constitution.
4. By the reckoning of some delegate, the Confab is said to have adopted resolutions and made proposals in the range of 5000 or more. On account of the hurried nature and uncoordinated method with which the Conference arrived at almost all of its decisions, there are, in my view, too many conflicting decisions taken and unsustainable proposals made. For instance, the Conference, on the one hand, drastically reduced the federal share from the federation account but, on the other, went ahead to heap more responsibilities on it by creating more federal commissions and passing more fiscal burdens to it.
5. Although the issue of what percentage to assign to the derivation principle in the revenue allocation formula was never a matter for the Confab to decide, delegates tore each other apart on this score.
Mercifully, this too has been sent back to the Presidency and the technical committee. Will failure to come to agreement at the Confab impact natively on the implementation process or timeline of its report? It needs not. But the matter is out of our hands, anyway.
6. On a final note, it was my view that the convocation of the Conference on the eve of an election year is ill-timed, perhaps ill-motivated. Now that the delegates have done their part, can the President summon enough courage and political will to pilot the studious and faithful implementation of all the resolutions adopted by the Confab now or in the near future? My educated guess is that he will be too busy with electioneering campaign between now and February 2015 to have the stomach to embark on such a perilous enterprise. Is it fair to expect the NASS to behave any differently?
Déjà vu, we are back to square one.
Yadudu is a delegate to the National Conference 2014