Will this Conference be different?

Nothing has been achieved in the first two weeks. I hear that some otherwise unemployed delegates have seen the fat pay cheque as a godsend and they are determined to ensure that the conference’s life span is extended beyond the limits of our elastic patience. The longer the conference takes the more money the more […]

Nothing has been achieved in the first two weeks. I hear that some otherwise unemployed delegates have seen the fat pay cheque as a godsend and they are determined to ensure that the conference’s life span is extended beyond the limits of our elastic patience. The longer the conference takes the more money the more money they collect. That is their calculation. The long-suffering masses may eventually have to chase such professional delegates out of Abuja if they overstay their welcome.
 I have just browsed through Odia Ofeimun’s trilogy on Nigeria’s search for the way forward (Taking Nigeria Seriously; When Does a Civil War Come to an End? – The Achebe/Awolowo Interface; and This Conference Must Be Different). I think the more we all try to interrogate our collective past, analyse where we are and plot a sustainable way of running our affairs as a nation based on justice and mutual respect, the better for us. Actually, Ofeimun, acclaimed poet and former president of the Association of Nigerian Authors, had not intended the three books as a trilogy in the classic sense but that is what they have turned out to be – three parts of one massive thesis.
 In Taking Nigeria Seriously, Ofeimun is bothered by the diminishing enthusiasm for the Nigerian Project as characterised by the resort of the elite to parochial trenches anytime the national question popped up. Our penchant for self-destruct makes the world think that the very idea of Nigeria is a joke but Ofeimun thinks we have to reverse the trend by first showing by words and deed that we take our country seriously.
“Nigeria needs to be taken seriously”, he argues, “first by her unionised nationalities and ethnic fractions whose struggles to catch up with, halt, or destroy the advantages of the other, have ropes all comers into a tragic bind from which they seem to be waiting for or drifting into a second colonialism.”
 Ofeimun locates one of the major causes of national dysfunction in the lack of a generally acceptable moral compass. The problem of moral crisis afflicts every region of the country. In his analysis, “the Arewa warlords who set out to undermine education and development in other parts of the country have ended up destroying education and development in the North in a more rigorous manner than any enemy could have done. The champions of Ndigbo who have no morally efficient accommodation for either the minorities in the East or their Yoruba siblings and competitors across the Niger, have merely ended up, as a result, cutting down their own possibilities; the Middle Belt which pays lip service to the struggle of Nigerian minorities in order to benefit from closeness to Arewa power ends up jumping from one form of marginalisation to another; the South-South, champions of resource control who wish to draft a constitution for themselves instead of drafting a constitution for Nigeria with which they can be comfortable, simply short-change their cause.”
 The second book, When Does a Civil War Come to an End?, is an analysis of the Nigerian Civil War of 1967-1970 and the mini-civil wars preceding it. Taking a humanistic position in favour of the victims of the pogrom which decimated the ranks of Igbos living in Northern Nigeria in 1966, the author reveals many of the undercurrents that led to the tragedy but argues that the untold human suffering was avoidable. He tackles renowned novelist Chinua Achebe’s narrative headlong and wonders how the long-suffering Igbo people were supposed to reinvent themselves within the Nigerian space when nurtured on a diet of half-truths and verifiable lies. Predictably, his worldview is unapologetically Awoist. There is no doubt that Ofeimun has stirred the hornet’s nest of controversies with this book.
 To resolve the Nigerian problem and allow every section of the country enough breathing space, Ofeimun has a hunch: “My hunch is that we shall all have to go back to that old Awolowo thesis in Strategy and Tactics of the People of Republic of Nigeria, which gives status to every ethnic group but structures federalism on commonly shared values across ethnic boundaries”.
 Ofeimun’s third book, This Conference Must be Different, ought to be on the recommended list of reference books for delegates of the National Conference. “If a book is to matter to a country”, writes Professor Kole Omotoso in the blurb, “this is the very book”.
Ofeimun thinks it is time we stopped trying to reinvent the wheel. We have had more than our fair share of conferences and national debates, he says. What remains is to distil the broad areas of agreement or yearnings identified in the reports of past conferences, special commissions of enquiry, and civil society soirees.
 He regards the following as among the areas where the present conference can begin to dust up ideas: Presidential system with four-year tenure; bicameral legislature; judiciary to draw funds as first line charge of consolidated revenue; removal of immunity for all elected officials; a mayoral administration for FCT; education, maternal healthcare and housing to be treated as fundamental human rights; creation or recreation of states to ensure that as much as possible, people of the same ethnic or language group in contiguous areas are put together in the same state; creation of Gbagyi, Ijebu, Nupe, Anioma, Kanuri etc with common welfare policies guaranteed across the federation; a shared, federated defence and security system with a directorate of each security agency under each level of government; budgets of all government agencies- including NNPC and CBN should be vetted by the National Assembly; derivation principles to be applicable to all revenues including Value Added Tax (VAT); separation of the office of the attorney-general from that of the Minister of Justice…
I think this is a book worth reading. More than that, let the ideas flow. No one should be scared of new or even ‘disagreeable ideas’. We can agree to disagree without being disagreeable. Next week I shall be looking at another offering in the area of charting a sustainable course for Nigeria – titled Crisis of Leadership in Nigeria: The realities and the way forward written by Umaru Haruna Usman.