Let me begin from the conclusion – national conference or dialogue or conversation as envisaged by the protagonists will not take place!
It will not take place because it is putting the cart before the horse. Only the people of Nigeria have the sovereign right to decide whether or not to have a national conference.
Without a referendum to have a national conference it will amount to a usurpation of the peoples rights for the government to organize such a conference. Without the peoples verified consent, any other type of conference cannot be sovereign and any conference that is not sovereign is mere gimmickry and a waste of our time and resources.
It will not take place because you do not build a house from the roof. How can you have a national conference when the components of the 'national' have not had their conferences?
My understanding is that our nation or country is made up of persons, these persons are in small groups starting from family to different levels of community then to the artificially created administrative entities of local governments, state governments and culminating in the almighty national or federal government. In my humble opinion, it is the communities that should first conference and decide how and with which other communities they wish to associate and the framework for that 'marriage'.
This being the foundation, matters should now proceed upwards layer by layer, the local governments should have their conference, then the states before and if there is still any need a national conference.
International Law recognizes the right to self determination by all peoples which is indeed enshrined in the United Nations Charter. Implicit in the word 'self determination' is the right of a people to decide for themselves AND there is no requirement that it must be in discussion with other peoples. Therefore discussing self determination in a national conference is a blatant derogation from that right.
Let me illustrate it this way and the example is purely innocent, if for instance the Ijaw people through a referendum agree to hold an Ijaw conference and decide to form an independent Ijaw
Nation and agree on boundaries and composition, that will be a correct exercise of its right to self determination. That is the way it ought to and can work, not the Ijaw people subjecting themselves to a national conference to decide their own future. For the sake of further elucidation, what if the other components disagree? Self determination will be meaningless if it is subject to external approval!
National conference will not hold because those who think it will solve the problem or supposed agitation for resource control will soon realise that there is a wide gulf between their concept of resource control and resource control in reality and natural fairness. How can resource control apply to only one resource? and is it not plain chicanery for states to demand resource control when that will also amount to theft or forced appropriation of communal resources by the state governments?
Therefore should the communities not be the ones to assert ownership and resolve in conferences, the modalities for exploitation of their resources including the role of any local, state or federal government? I think so!
There will not be a national conference, because a national conference premised on so called unfairness and inequity especially as regards the excessive powers of a federal government cannot gain any traction or any iota of legitimacy when it is organized by the same federal government.
When the same federal government in its 'mightiness' decrees a team of carefully chosen and 'trusted' people to midwife the conference then that conference has been 'aborted without pregnancy'. Without making a mockery of the committee, with an average age of over 60 years, they are seriously disconnected from the vast majority of the population, the younger generation, who in truth have little patience for attitudes and ideas originated from and sustained by oral tradition and most certainly resent the usurpation of their voices by these 'old soldier never die' brigade.
The national conference will not happen because the present clamour from a segment of society is predicated on myths, unsubstantiated summations, half baked ideas and dangerous propaganda including that; Nigeria's problems are caused by amalgamation. The North and South should never have come together! All rubbish! all products of selfish and mindless manipulation of a sadly gullible populace. Ordinary Nigerians have always lived and worked in whatever part of the country that favours them. Many own businesses including farms, mining enterprises, hotels and whatever in communities far flung from theirs. They are less concerned about the fact of ethnic differences.
The unproductive locust elite will not let them be! Our good people are assaulted with divisive machinations only by those whose stock in trade is sharing our commonwealth in Abuja and various state capitals without any meaningful contribution to national advancement.
The question I want to ask these ethnic jingoists is this, assuming we agree to divide Nigeria, will everybody be required to relocate to their communities of origin? Will Chief Edwin Clark's yoruba wife be 'returned to sender' or will she be given Ijaw nationality? Why must we keep trying to deceive our hapless people that their poverty and lack of development of their communities are caused by the fact that they are part of an improperly negotiated and forcibly contrived Nigeria?
When this is a LIE!
We do not need 'this' conference to solve our problems all of which are occasioned by corrupt governance in general. Instead the clamour and dissipation of our energies on 'this' conference will only distract us from tackling the problems and those responsible. The only reason why anyone can even altruistically be interested in a national conference is because we as a people realise that our elected officials at all levels do not enjoy real legitimacy that can only be conferred by the people.
Ordinarily, all the issues to do with true federalism, which I subscribe to and which we need to practice can be achieved by the peoples representatives in a constitutional process. Unfortunately the truth is that in the present set-up, the peoples mandate is absent. If we cannot demand and ensure elections with real credibility, which in turn will make elected officials answerable to the people, no conference or conversation will have any meaning or impact.
God loves Nigeria (perhaps too much) and it does not take a soothsayer to tell us that the whole deceit and charade of divisive rhetoric for selfish reasons is about to be exposed. That is why I welcome all the noisemaking because all the absurdities and the falsity of the selfish manipulation will blow open! then the elite vocal minority will see clearly that the only division in Nigeria is that between RICH and POOR!
The agenda of the conference we must inevitably hold will not be about ethnicity, it will be about resource control and allocation – why are so few controlling and allocating all the resources to themselves privately to the detriment of the vast majority?
Attendance will be open to all and will not be restricted to self appointed spokespersons or those who can arrange rigged mandates. And that conference will be held, the real 'conference!' and the rich will also cry!
Edo Ukpong
Legal Practitioner
Legal Practitioner
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