Now, the national conference
By
UNFOLDING political events make the Sovereign National Conference imperative. Still, the conference has not been projected as in the over-riding interest of the whole nation. The North is against it because it sees the conference, sovereign or not, as a short hand for the dissolution of the Nigerian federation. The strong pro-Nigerian stance by Northerners is a sign of the historic transformation which our nation has undergone in recent times. At the Constitutional Conference in London by Nigerian party leaders during the colonial times, the Northern Peoples Congress, like the Action Group, asked for a constitutional provision permitting any region which wanted to pull out of the federation to do so almost effortlessly. The campaign was eventually defeated by the National Council of Nigeria and Cameroons which wanted not only an indissoluble union but a prosperous nation to serve as a beacon of hope to all Africans at home and in the Diaspora, thus proving eloquently to the world that the Blackman could manage his own affairs most admirably.
Ahmadu Bello, the Northern Region Premier and leader of the NPC, is on record as describing the amalgamation of Northern and Southern Nigeria as "the mistake of 1914". The crying battle of the mobs who were rioting in various northern cities in the mid 1960s was "araba", Hausa word for secession. In his written broadcast to Nigerians on assumption of office as Nigeria’s second military Head of State on July 29th, 1966, Yakubu Gowon stated that "there is no basis for Nigeria’s unity".
Critics may well charge that the Northern leaders’ pro-Nigerian stance owes to the fact of Northern dominion of the Nigerian leadership since independence and of Northern lack of access to the sea and, most important, the absence of petroleum resources in the area. Much as a National Conference has become inevitable, its proponents have not marketed it persuasively. The call for a Sovereign National Conference got to a climax during the Abacha regime. And most of the apostles were of Yoruba extraction openly questioning the doctrine of the indissolubility of the Nigerian union. Beko Ransome-Kuti was one of them. It was, therefore, not baseless that the North should regard the agitation for a (Sovereign) National Conference as a thinly disguised attempt to break up Nigeria.
The conversion of sectional organizations like Ohaneze Ndigbo and the Union of Niger Delta to the agitation for a conference of ethnic nationalities has not helped matters. Even the Rotimi Williams-led Group of The Patriots shares the vision of sectional groupings: a conference of nationalities. That many Nigerians, including distinguished men of letters, should press for a conference of ethnic leaders and representatives should be of concern. Where in the world in recent times has a conference to decide the future and destiny of a modern nation – state been comprised of ethnic warriors?
The obsession with ethnicity in the Nigerian public domain tends to portray us as a nation of throwbacks and anachronistic elements. Ironically, if some white man or foreigner had recommended for us a conference of ethnic nationalities because ours is a country where "tongue and tribe differ", we would have descended on him, as Chinua Achebe does in The Trouble with Nigeria, for regarding us as ethnological dinosaurs, ethnocentric cavemen and women, a people unable to reconcile themselves to the values and demands of modern times.
Sovereign National Conferences have been held in Benin Republic, Togo, Niger Republic, Republic of Congo, Chad, Madagascar, etc, with varying degrees of success. None of the conferences was held by ethnic nationalists. Conference participants came from the bar associations, medical associations, business people’s associations, labour unions, journalists associations, religious groups, civic and human rights groups, etc. These are the stake-holders in a modern nation-state.
Let us now examine the circumstance which can cause a Sovereign National Conference to hold. A Sovereign National Conference can hold in a polity only when a legitimate government is not in place. An important characteristic of a legitimate and democratic government is the presence of a virile and independent legislature whose members are popularly elected and are alive to their responsibilities as authentic representatives of the people and defenders of their interests. Assessed on the basis of this canon, none of the countries in Africa where sovereign national conferences have taken place could be described as having legitimate governments in the early 1990s when the conferences were held. Sovereign National Conferences have taken place only in Francophone Africa. This is not surprising because the conferences were the original idea of former French President Francois Mitterrand who saw them as providing an avenue to install transitional or interim governments in former French colonies in Africa which, despite the liberal democratic revolutions in Eastern Europe in 1989, were still saddled with backward and embarrassingly parasitic dictatorships.
When Anthony Enahoro, Mokwugo Okoye and Olu Onagoruwa launched the Movement for National Reformation in 1992 with a Sovereign National Conference as the main agenda, they were obviously influenced by the experiences of Francophone countries in Africa south of the Sahara. The agenda struck a harmonious chord in a number of Nigerians because the Ibrahim Babangida regime had lost legitimacy-- the economic adjustment program was creating and deepening widespread misery, corruption had become a cardinal principle of state policy, and the transition to civil rule programme had become endless and directionless. When the malevolent Abacha regime launched a brutal war against the Nigerian people, it also made sense to demand a Sovereign National Conference.
What has now made a Sovereign National Conference inevitable is the crisis of legitimacy which the Obasanjo government will face in its second term principally because the 2003 general election is fundamentally and irredeemably flawed. A situation where the President and at least two thirds of members of the National Assembly and state governors as well as state legislators do not enjoy the consent of the people is not different from a military or colonial government. Democracy cannot survive in such an environment because democracy is, first and foremost, about governing with a mandate freely given in an election.
restore Nigeria on the path of sanity SNC is unavoidable. The fear that it can break up Nigeria is unfounded, for it did not ruin any African country where it has been held. In any case, the SNC can dissolve the Nigerian union if at least two thirds of the delegates so desire, which is near impossible. The SNC membership should be drawn from the government, political parties and non-government organizations like the bar and manufacturers associations; there should also be participants from the component groups of the Nigerian Federation elected on the principle of equality of states. The idea of the SNC comprising ethnic champions is untidy. If the millions of Igbo in seven states have, say, one representative at the SNC, is it appropriate that Adamawa or Taraba State alone should have at least 60 delegates because it has some 60 ethnic groups?
When Nigeria was created by Europeans, ethnicity was never a criterion. Otherwise, the Hausa of Niger Republic and the Yoruba of Benin Republic would have been in Nigeria. Since we are now in a modern nation-state, participants in the Sovereign National Conference should be stakeholders in the Nigeria project. The time for the conference is at hand.
June 2003