National Confab: How ‘Oga Corruption’ awesomely muted delegates

President Jonathan’s convened National Conference would certainly be remembered as the most unpopular ‘constitutional’ convention in Nigeria’s political history. If anything, the multi-billion naira conference was a waste of the country’s much needed resources as much as it resulted in a failed plot to force on Nigerians a draft constitution that had the ulterior motive […]

President Jonathan’s convened National Conference would certainly be remembered as the most unpopular ‘constitutional’ convention in Nigeria’s political history. If anything, the multi-billion naira conference was a waste of the country’s much needed resources as much as it resulted in a failed plot to force on Nigerians a draft constitution that had the ulterior motive of actualizing President Jonathan’s tenure elongation project.
The insinuations of those who were skeptical about the motive of the conference were confirmed by the dishonorable events that beclouded the close of the exercise. It is scandalous, disreputable and unbecoming of the confab chairman, Justice Idris Legbo Kutigi, to spearhead an illegality called draft constitution; proclaiming that he had President Jonathan’s mandate. Maybe, Jonathan in Kutigi’s four-figure table (Revised 2014 edition) now equals 150 million Nigerians a denominator that makes the ‘mandate’ weighty and good enough for a former Chief Justice of Nigeria and a man who is over 70 years of age to risk his reputation. Many who recall the Supreme Court judgment in the case of the 2007 presidential elections in Nigeria express little surprise at Justice Kutigi’s demeanour.
The sincerity of the convener of the conference comes under critical interrogation when the exercise is examined within the contest of the statutory functions of the National Assembly. If President Jonathan felt any part of the existing 1999 constitution needs amendment, nothing stopped him from sending appropriate bills to amend such sections of the country’s legal document. But, to try jettison the entire constitution and replace it with a ‘new’ or ‘draft’ (or ‘amendments’ which was the last of the titles proposed by men with Jonathan’s mandate) without the legal framework of a constituent assembly comprising of elected members was indeed an ambition that only a Nigerian with little knowledge of Nigeria’s constitutional history would nurse or cherish. But because the convener was cluelessly deceptive and fraudulent, he ended up under the forethought of his advisers gathering some old ‘cargos’ who are too old, too tired, or over-used for his new ’mandate’. While the confab was on, some newspapers published photographs of delegates showing some delegates sleeping during plenary sessions. Others showed empty seats.
Reasons are also not far-fetched for those who believe that the conference was a remarkable achievement. Yes, some poor delegates have made the list of millionaires in their communities or neighborhoods. The N12 million allowance for the three months period the conference was initially planned to last (which was supposedly increased to N20 million when the conference period was extended to five months) must have also made some delegates property owners. Those who never owned a house or whose cars never went further than 20 kilometers from a mechanic workshop would have owned a house or acquired good serviceable car.
The conference allowance would have also boosted India’s economy through medical tourism as delegates who had health challenges would have made a trip (or trips) to India for medical attention. All this for many delegates except Malam Kabiru Yusuf (Chairman/CEO of Media Trust Limited), Pastor Tunde Bakare (Overseer of Latter Rain Assembly) and Olisa Gbakoba (Former President of the Nigeria Bar Association) who refused to collect the millions. Jonathan against the wish of patriotic Nigerians was lavishing so much on an unnecessary exercise that was doomed to fail at a time when the country’s critical sectors including education, health and agriculture are nothing better than failed or collapsed systems.
The fears of Malam Kabiru Yusuf that the conference might end up in a national shouting match as well as the analytical insinuations expressed by Professor Auwalu Yadudu (another delegate to the conference who described the convention as a dignified presidential advisory committee) have all come to pass. The futile manner in which the conference ended has once again proved that the solution to Nigeria’s myriad of problems does not lie in any national conference. Malam Kabiru Yusuf had opined in a piece ‘From the National Conference, with love’ published on the back-page of Daily Trust edition of Monday March 17, 2014 that the problem with Nigeria is not of any need to ‘sit down and talk’ as believed by many Nigerians but of ‘actually learning how to walk the talk’.
In any case, some of the 492 delegates who have passionately longed for a platform to express their ethnic, regional or religious feelings must have had enough time between March 17, 2014 when the conference began and August 14, 2014 when it ended to freely and fanatically display their show of bigotry and self-serving ideologies or conspiracies.
Granted even that there was need for the conference at all, it failed to address the issues that actually matter; recommending workable initiatives that would address the critical challenges of poverty, unemployment and insecurity. But rather than discuss Nigeria in the light of these problems, many delegates were busy discussing themselves along ethnic and regional divides. In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Professor Oyewale Tomori while commenting on the conference lamented that ‘Nobody is talking about the energy revolution that the Astronomy Column has been trying to alert policy matters’; cautioning in addition that ‘nobody is worrying about what will happen to Nigeria when the oil dries up’. Professor Tomori, out of disappointment said, ‘I actually pray the oil dries up so that we will begin to see ourselves as a nation’.
More amazing from the conference, as observed by my senior colleague in journalism Malam Mahmud Jega who writes Monday column for Daily Trust is how ‘the voices of all this country’s vocal trade unions, professional associations, gender and human rights groups were muted’. Jega remarked that no professional or trade union made any serious demand for a constitutional change favourable to its members.
It is even most dumbfounding in my opinion that the conference opened and closed without any special mention or special session or an exclusive committee on the intractable social evil called corruption. If we have on several occasions over the years linked or traced our collective failure in leadership, governance and development to corruption, it beats one’s imagination that a national conference which had time to discuss ordinary policy matters such as the establishment of a Waterways Safety Corps would have forgotten or perhaps ignored corruption; a critical matter that has eaten deep in to the moral fabrics of our national life. The least Nigerians who wish this country and its future well expected as one of the outcomes of the conference is a deterring punishment such as execution or life-sentence for persons found guilty of economic and financial crimes which is the case in countries like China.
Could it be that delegates at the conference were awesomely overwhelmed by corruption and  thus muted by it? Has corruption now become a revered element among Nigerians so much so that they fear to talk about it? I just hope it was not the discussion about ‘Oga corruption’ that scared some delegates away from attending plenary sessions or committee meetings. Could the absenteeism of some delegates be traced to the fear of discussing corruption? The Confab Committee on Civil Society, Labour and Sports sacked its chairperson Bola Ogunrimade for absenteeism and replaced her with her deputy, Comrade Issa Aremu. This scenario indicates how unserious our leaders are in the fight against corruption. May Allah (SWT) deliver Nigeria from the hands of wicked leaders and their mercenaries, amin.