National discourse in Nigeria today is rife with so much confusion, incoherence, misconception and questionable assumptions – which in itself is a reflection of an extremely complex reality that often defies formulation and prognosis. In the circumstance, I cannot pretend to have any certain prescriptions for Nigeria’s sundry crisis and woes other than to plead restraint on all sides. By the same token, I am more perturbed than comforted by those who speak with swashbuckling certitude on the efficacy and utility of their formulaic prescriptions. Now, let me begin with some random questions vis: is Sovereign National Conference (SNC) synonymous with the restructuring of Nigeria? I think it is a platitude to say that the answer to this question is no. Is it fair to suggest that the major objective and goal of the principal proponents and advocates of the SNC (perhaps including myself) is the restructuring of Nigeria? Will the convocation of SNC automatically and most certainly result in the restructuring of Nigeria, in other words, is it inconceivable that there may be a completely different outcome other than that envisaged by the advocates? How will delegates to the SNC be composed? Will it be on the basis of the presently delineated federal constituencies; parity of States (as the Senate is constituted); or ethnic nationalities? If it is on the basis of ethnic nationalities – how do we defined an ethnic nationality and will they have equal representation regardless of size and population? How will decisions be taken at the SNC? – Will they be based on the majoritarian principle or made subject to individual veto? Is it possible to have restructuring, devolution and decentralisation of power, greater resource control et al without SNC?

Any serious contemplation of these posers will readily reveal that the utility of a SNC in a rancorous, unstable and emotionally charged atmosphere as we have in Nigeria today is heavily circumscribed and limited only to the single "benefit" of forcing a resolution of the national question (one way or another) on one hand or dangerously dramatise a national stalemate on another. As I see it, the primary precondition for a successful and fruitful SNC is that no participant will on accident of the outcome (and any outcome is possible) feel so dissatisfied as to repudiate such an outcome or its commitment to the nation. In other words if the advocacy of restructuring were to be defeated at the SNC, the proponents of the policy would be gracious enough to accept the defeat and agree to keep their peace. What I am saying here is that the possibility of a meaningful SNC in the prevailing Nigerian circumstances presupposes a reasonable measure of transnational and cross-cultural convergence if not consensus on the fundamental issues at stake. The SNC really ought to be the number one campaign issue in a general election – where the notion can be defeated or accepted and once it is accepted the winner (having become the government) can then go ahead to implement the agenda.

There is however another route to the convocation of a SNC – which in the case of Nigeria was preempted by the death and exit of General Sani Abacha. This is the negative but perhaps the more familiar route. It was a situation in which the State (as embodied in the government) was completely devoid of legitimacy – by reason of the fact that the government was not elected and indeed acted against the democratic will of the Nigerian public by disregarding the 1993 presidential elections and abrogating the Third Republic. Subsequently the government degenerated into an economically retrogressive, politically repressive, and bureaucratically destructive personality cult. Further, the government had foreclosed any possibility of its constitutional removal by subordinating constitutional proposals to the personal ambition of General Abacha. Above all, the regime was pursuing a strategy of political pogrom against a particular section of the country – where an active resistance against it (the regime) was building up. Having thus foreclosed the possibility of constitutional and political reforms, and deliberately aggravated the ethno-regional cleavages within the nation – (thereby fostering the spectre of Nigeria’s disintegration) the regime itself had rendered the revolutionary proposal of SNC an inevitability.

Confronted with such a rigged and rogue political order which had become self-perpetuating and impervious to reformation, there really was no other viable option than the proposal of jettisoning the extant order and begin de novo the process of building a new constitutional and political order. It was a zero-sum situation where the political loss had become total and there was no realistic hope of any redemption. What could have been worse for Nigeria than being stuck with Abacha and the political order he had instituted and was consolidating? I have asked this question because the convocation of a SNC in a situation of angst, mutual recrimination and emotional instability always carries with it the danger of spinning out of control and degenerating into a fratricidal war of attrition. Under Abacha this was surely the fate that awaited Nigeria. And so if without SNC, Nigeria was categorically destined for perdition, it would then mean we had nothing to lose ( but probably something to gain) by pressing for SNC. Can we sincerely and truthfully say the same thing of the present dispensation? I think not.

First, we have an accountable constitutional and political order (with which we are immensely dissatisfied) but which is at least amenable and answerable to pressures for reformation. Even though, I wonder at times whether we are not confusing (or conflating) our frustrations with infrastructural decay and a seeming governmental ineptitude with the inadequacies and imperfections of the subsisting constitutional dispensation. Moreover, I can see a deliberate and conscious effort by the present central government at instituting a minimum programme of re-inventing Nigeria. In appreciation of this paradigm shift I am not now as certain as I was under Abacha that Nigeria will not work. I am not now convinced, that without SNC, Nigeria is headed for the rocks even though I believe that Nigeria can be better with a successfully held SNC. But what if it fails? Can we rule out war and the ruin of what it took hundreds of years to build?