We can’t be manipulated – Dr Yerima

On political restructuring There is another contentious issue in our committee that is the revenue sharing formula which we want to really alter. It is also going to be very tough, because the position of the North is it going to reduce the 13 percent derivation to five percent and also scrap the Ministry of […]

On political restructuring
There is another contentious issue in our committee that is the revenue sharing formula which we want to really alter. It is also going to be very tough, because the position of the North is it going to reduce the 13 percent derivation to five percent and also scrap the Ministry of Niger Delta, the NNDC and others, and it is really going to be contentious.
On your question about the scrapping of the local government, it is really very unfortunate. I would support a situation where the states are even abrogated rather than the local governments, because the state governors have really been very unfair to the local governments. This is for the facts that, the local government funds have always been denied to them. The local government areas have been left undeveloped. So it is better to develop the grassroots rather than pump the money to the state governors and they go on stealing these monies. It is really not fair, so for us as northern delegates we are very clear that, we are not going to support the scrapping of local government areas in the political structure. That will not augur well for the whole of the country not even the North.
On state police
Issue of state police has been done away with. State police will be allowed. Former security officials on our committee have come out clearly and told us the implications of doing that. They came out with cogent reasons why we shouldn’t have that. Those from the South feel that they can easily do that, talking about federalism and all these kinds of things.
On northern position
Well, the position of the northern delegates is as simple as this; One, there must be a Nigeria, that nobody is going to divide this country. As it has been said, ours is the church marriage, for better, for worse. We have to stay together. We are not going to listen to anybody talking about bringing things that will divide this country. Secondly, we are here to protect the interests of the Nigerian people particularly the poor all over the country, from the North or from the South.
But inevitably, you know the Northern environment is much more the Southern environment, therefore what we are trying to do is protecting the interests of the northern poor and then move on to protect the interests of the Southern poor.
On Jonathan’s motive for the conference
I believe we are intelligent enough to know if there are some ulterior motives. And if there are, we are really ready to crash it. We have done it before and we are capable of doing it again. We did that to Obasanjo’s third term. We dealt with him in his bid for third term. That should be, and must be a lesson to President Jonathan. If he and his PDP feel that, they can use the conference for something else, they should think twice. It is definitely not going to be possible we have crushed third term and we will crush anything that will come.
On conference recommendation
Well, if you are talking of legality, we are even illegal to a large extent. And if you go into an in-depth analysis of the composition of the members of this conference you will see that, most of us are former governors, former police chiefs, former generals in the army, former senators, former members of the House of Representatives, state assembly members, some business moguls that were directly responsible for the destruction of this country.
After all, what is that we will discuss in this conference that cannot be discussed by the National Assembly? What is in there that has not really been discussed? What new thing that we are going to come out with that the National Assembly cannot do? None, so we should not have a hell lot of hope on this conference. But, for diversionary tactic, it could be possible, as I said, if it is out and we know where it goes, I mean it is heading we know how to crush it. We cannot be used, nobody can use us.