One more volume for the dusty shelves

To begin with, the frequency of constitutional conferences does not a good government make. The US has not had a constitutional convention since the one in Philadelphia in 1776. Nigeria however organises a constitutional conference every decade. There were two in the 1950s, one in the 1960s, one in the 1970s, two in the 1980s, […]

To begin with, the frequency of constitutional conferences does not a good government make. The US has not had a constitutional convention since the one in Philadelphia in 1776. Nigeria however organises a constitutional conference every decade. There were two in the 1950s, one in the 1960s, one in the 1970s, two in the 1980s, two in the 1990s, one in the last decade and one so far in this decade before it is even half way through.
The one that just ended had some colour by Nigerian standards. On display were intricately embroidered, heavily starched gowns, the finest lace material, tall women’s head gears and many “resource control” hats, the political fashion statement of the Niger Delta elite. Yet, this conference did not impress me quite as much as the pictures I saw in China Pictorial magazine of the start of the Chinese Peoples’ Political Consultative Conference in 1983. Delegates from China’s minority ethnic groups turned out in colourful tribal costumes. Which reminds me; instead of having a constitutional conference every decade, why not have a Nigerian People’s Political Consultative Conference every ten years structured along the lines of the Chinese one?
This Jonathan conference did not attract much attention from Nigerians. Even me, a political reporter of two decades’ standing, often forgot to keep up with its proceedings. Compare that to what I saw in Niger Republic in 1991 when I went to report on the Conference Nationale for Citizen magazine. Citizens were so highly interested in the proceedings that people were seen riding on bicycles with radio sets glued to their ears.  
There are reasons to believe that the report produced by this conference is headed for the dusty shelves of Presidency stores where hundreds of such reports now rest in peace. Almost no one was satisfied by the conference’s outcome. Professor Ben Nwabueze, who convinced the president to convene it, washed his hands off the conference once he was not allowed to single- handedly write a constitution for Nigeria. Other men who had been campaigning for a Sovereign National Conference since the late 1980s washed their hands off this conference since it was not sovereign. They wanted something akin to Niger Republic’s Conference Nationale of 1990-91, which took direct charge of the security forces, summoned ministers and Army commanders to testify before it, and ordered the arrest of some persons for corruption and human rights abuses.
President Jonathan declared on the day he formally opened the conference last March that he had no personal agenda for it. Many people did not believe him. There is an old African saying that when a fowl chases you in the morning, you should take to your heels because it might have acquired teeth in the night. That a man who was a conference skeptic all his life suddenly converted to the idea and hastily convened one with a general election less than a year away was enough reason to rattle a monk.
I was personally amazed that while the conference lasted, the voices of all this country’s vocal trade unions, professional associations, gender and human rights groups were muted. No professional group or trade union made any serious demand for a constitutional change favourable to its members. Groups that you will think have many things to say such as youths, women, pensioners, ex-soldiers and “settlers” were mostly silent.
Those that strutted the most on the conference stage like so many peacocks were the leaders of regional blocs. Two of such blocs, namely Niger Delta and Igbo blocs, had the sharpest focus at the conference. Northern bloc leaders earned a medal for the most late-in-the-day recovery. Niger Delta bloc leaders, ordinarily fractious, united behind the agenda of increased share for derivation, no offshore/onshore dichotomy, fiscal federalism and resource control. When those issues failed to make headway at the conference, a clever scheme was rammed through to remove local governments from partaking in the Federation Account ostensibly because they are not federating units.
Igbo bloc leaders also had a ready agenda, namely the creation of one additional state in Igboland or alternatively, to reorganise the country into six regions. Igbo leaders have been firm on this goal since 1994 when it was adopted at an Eastern conference to prepare for the Abacha-era Constitutional Conference of 1999-95. Its stated goal, as captured in a secret report, is to equalise the Igbos with the Yoruba in the Nigerian federation by removing the Yoruba advantage in having more states.
Even though agitation for a SNC originally arose from Yoruba land and was given impetus by June 12, the West largely took a back seat at this conference and allowed the North to slug it out with a determined Niger Delta/Igbo front. It seems the Yoruba have no sharply defined demands from Nigeria anymore. The disastrous Obasanjo presidency has silenced Yoruba cries of marginalisation. The pan-Yoruba groups Afenifere and Yoruba Council of Elders [YCE] are shadows of themselves these days. To boot, the North is no longer seen as the big stumbling block to Yoruba political aspirations. In fact, for the first time since independence, Yorubaland’s dominant APC leaders think they can do political business with the North. As for the Middle Belt, despite its political leaders’ general support for President Jonathan, they found that they are at one with the far North on all the existential issues in the Nigerian Federation. The old ploy to align the Middle Belt with the South failed at this conference.
Now that the conference has ended, the battle to incorporate its findings into the 1999 Constitution shifts to the National and state assemblies. Who has the interest to spearhead this effort? Not the Jonathan Presidency. The attempt to provide for a six year single term of office for the president and governors effective from 2015 was thrown out by conference delegates almost unanimously. The second, cleverer attempt to incorporate the amendments as “Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 2014,” thereby annulling all tenures already served by anyone, also failed.  As such, there is no incentive for Jonathan to expend much political capital trying to ram through these changes to the constitution.
Even if he wants to, how will this be done? Presidency-inspired attempts by the National Assembly’s Constitution Review Committee led by Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu to amend the constitution and allow the president, maybe through a legislator, to put forward a new constitution for adoption was twice rebuffed by lawmakers. There is almost no chance that lawmakers will amend the constitution to permit the conference report to be subjected to a national plebiscite. Which leaves only one option; the amendment items adopted by the National Conference will have to be placed one by one before the National and state assemblies for ratification. This procedure guarantees that the most contentious among them will fail to muster the necessary majorities for passage. An amendment to create a new Igbo state alone is dead on arrival. Nor will any Northern state assembly approve an amendment to throw local governments out of the cake-sharing loop.
Since this is the way things stand, why did we spend N10 billion to produce a report that will only augment the Presidency’s huge archive of unimplemented committee and conference reports that are gathering dust of the shelves?