Jonathan, allow conference committee a free hand

                                                      President Goodluck Jonathan

PRESIDENT Goodluck Jonathan’s latest utterances on the proposed national dialogue have all but confirmed the position of sceptics who had doubted his sincerity in initiating the exercise in the first place. It is also a contradiction of his earlier position revealed in his statement while inaugurating the conference advisory committee. But this is just one of the President’s numerous blunders.
 

On the occasion of the inauguration of the National Dialogue Advisory Committee, the President had declared, with all solemnity, that “sovereignty continues to belong to the people, even as the people evolve strategies and tactics to strengthen its foundation for the benefit of successor generations.” It is therefore difficult to reconcile this position with the latest utterances of the
President, who was widely quoted recently as saying that the “outcome of the dialogue will be handed over to the National Assembly for legislation.” He is dead wrong. For this assignment, he must abjure his feckless leadership style and become a pragmatic troubleshooter who is determined and sure-footed in delving into the heart of Nigeria’s chronic constitutional quandary. 

Coming about a week after he had proclaimed the inviolability of the people’s sovereignty, Jonathan’s statement is not only contradictory and inconsistent, but also a huge disappointment to those who may have been looking up to the conference as an opportunity to ventilate their feelings about the state of the Nigerian union. To such people, their opinion may no longer count if it is to be subjected to the whims and caprices of a few, who, although are supposed to be the representatives of the people, have since notoriously lost touch with the people.

Jonathan’s decision to “hand over” the outcome of the conference to the National Assembly as part of the constitution amendment process presupposes that the lawmakers are the true representatives of the people and are, therefore, serving the interest of the people. Even if this is true, can a decision taken on behalf of the people be better than that taken by the people themselves, in exercising their God-given free will? If sovereignty truly belongs to the people, as the President said, why not allow the people themselves to exercise their sovereignty? Why should preference be given to a process where that sovereignty is to be exercised by proxy? It is tantamount to saying that there should be no general election as the National Assembly is there to vote on behalf of the electorate.

Besides, by telling Nigerians that the outcome of the national conference would “be handed over to the National Assembly for legislation,” the President is already preempting the committee that he himself has set up. Agreed that, by its nature, the committee’s job is advisory, meaning its advice could be rejected, it is still presumptuous to declare what would happen even before the committee has settled down to business. Could this be an indication that the President already had in mind what he intended to do and was just using the committee as part of a grand design to distract and fool Nigerians? This had been the stock-in-trade of his predecessors but this will no longer be acceptable in today’s Nigeria.

By nature, a constitutional conference embodies a constitution-making process, as distinct from a constitution amendment process, which the National Assembly has been embarking on regularly, with little or no perceived benefit to the people; both should not be confused. If Nigerians had been satisfied with the various amendments that the National Assembly has been embarking on, there should have been no clamour for a National Conference.

We need to evolve a system that will make integrity, justice, equity, a sense of duty and meritocracy the basic principles of governance. Given the way Nigeria is currently structured, it has become increasingly glaring that this will ever remain a pipe dream. The people, therefore, need to sit down and talk. The Nigeria of today is not the Nigeria that was envisaged by its founding fathers. They had envisioned a situation where each region would develop at its own pace, independent of the other. That was why they opted for federalism as the mode of coexistence. The independence of the regions did not therefore come at the same time. As is the case with other federal systems such as Canada, where Quebec, as a component, periodically reviews its status in the union, all Nigerians are asking for is an opportunity to do so. They also want their decisions to be respected. We have pretended and deceived ourselves about national unity for too long. In the real sense of the word, there is no nation called Nigeria. Are we forever going to be bogged down by fear of disintegration or evolve a pragmatic system that works?  The time is really ripe for frank discussion. 

There are definitely many booby traps ahead. The President must not be caught off guard. This is not a political dialogue, but a national conference aimed at fundamentally restructuring the basis of Nigeria’s corporate existence. Anything short of this is gibberish and will never work.   For those who are still familiar with what obtained at the 2005 political conference organised by former President Olusegun Obasanjo, it was an attempt to ratify its decisions by the National Assembly that led to the entire exercise being mischievously thrown overboard. If the reason for doing away with the outcome of the conference was because of an attempt to smuggle Obasanjo’s third term bid through, how come the rest of the decisions were thrown away like the proverbial baby and the bathwater? The legislators evidently served themselves, not Nigerians.

If Jonathan is indeed sincere about the need for Nigerians to sit down and discuss, he should stop pontificating on the job of the committee he set up “to facilitate the most acceptable process to bring this aspiration to fruition.” The last thing Nigerians need at this stage is another conference designed mainly for politicians to buy time for themselves while the basic structural problems weighing the country down remain unresolved. It is dangerous to push our luck beyond 2015.