THE need
for a national conference to address all the nagging issues and the attendant
problems or challenges confronting this nation in order to avert the collapse
of the country seems clear to all now.
While
many see the conference as an opportunity to correct the ethnic imbalance
threatening our existence as a nation, many others see it as an opportunity to
redraft our legal basis to continue as a nation.
The
variety of clamours for changes in the delegates and representatives at the
conference from too many quarters, confirm that it cannot all be just for the
good of the people they claim to be fighting for.
Some
simply want to line their pockets with Naira from the Confab, and why not? Who
would not want to pick up about N4.0million with all the honour and dignity of
being a representative of the people at such an epoch-making gathering.
However,
the super-importance of this conference underscores the reason why the FG must
painstakingly address the complaints and cries for justice and fairness in the
representation formula at the conference, bearing in mind that some may want to
come to the conference just to stall it!
This
conference must therefore succeed, unlike the past two that failed because of
the motive of their conveners at that time. While General Sani Abacha’s
conference was essentially to achieve his perpetuation in power, that of OBJ
was aimed at his third term ambition, hence the two crashed.
With the
expiration of the Lord Lugard’s 1914 Amalgamation Treaty last year, GEJ must do
everything in his power to ensure the success of this national conference in
order to give the North and the South of Nigeria, the basis to continue to
exist in a peaceful and prosperous nation. Why did I say a prosperous nation
with all our woes? Yes, because to exist for over 43 years without a war in a
country like this is prosperous for those of us who saw and lived in Biafra as
children.
Many of
our leaders who beat the drums of war and try to intimidate us at every corner,
and whenever they feel they are not getting what they want, do so because they
never really saw or experienced the pains war inflict on the vulnerable
like women and children. Any man from Umuahia to Borno, and from Sokoto to
Abakaliki, who sees war, bloodshed, insurgency as a means of power negotiation
is an enemy of the Nigerian people.
This is
why this conference is key, and is also why the South Easterners (Ndigbo) must
do everything possible to sink their differences and come to the conference
with a unified bold position. They bore and are still bearing the brunt of that
wicked and heartless, genocidal, fratricidal war against poor innocent persons.
That
Ndigbo were not completely wiped out in that war was because God was on their
side, and they owe God that duty to see that this Conference and the unity of
this nation is preserved. Ndigbo must seize this opportunity and every
subsequent one in the future to chart an acceptable destiny in Nigeria for
their people.
The
reasons are simple: Without provoking any one, they started killing us in the
North in 1966, and when we decided to go our own way, they descended on us like
a ton of bricks. For three solid years, we were hunted down like forest rats
and rabbits and killed in millions, and were subsequently defeated and dragged
back into their Nigeria.
They said
it was no victor and no vanquished; we had no choice, and we lived and started
our struggles till this date, and having accepted this Nigeria as ours,
no one should be allowed to dictate to us how we shall fare in this nation
after over 43 years. Ndigbo must rise and give all they can muster to safeguard
the unity and peace of this country, for they have more at stake, and this
conference offers them and others an opportunity. The discordant voices from
Ndigbo on their position must be harmonised now because as we say, a man who
makes haste avoids disaster.
This
conference will offer Nigerians the opportunity to tackle headlong, the four
tormenting horns of this nation, namely elections and power
sharing, security, and corruption. The first two will use the last
to destroy this nation if we do not tell ourselves the truth and shame the
devil. Oil has become like the opium of the Nigerian leadership.
Everyone
from the governors, representatives, to the common criminal in the Niger Delta
creeks, is angling to share from the oil money with the only difference being
in their chosen methods. It is time to consider at this conference the breakup
of the NNPC into a minimum of three organisations to address the multiple
interests of the zones constituting this country as well as exploiting the
resources in the illegal refineries that exist in the Niger Delta region to the
advantage of this country.
The
Conference should help us to address the issue of national security from the
standpoint of the state police, to ensure the use of home grown security
arrangement, apparatus and systems. Nigerians must be assured of the safety of
their property and investments in all parts of this country, especially in the
North of Nigeria, with acceptable and adequate compensations for victims of
communal and religious crisis.
The
conference must produce an arrangement that will engender free and fair
elections by curbing all variants of rigging in order to make them things of
the past in no distant future. To curb corruption, all leaders and government
agencies must be held accountable to the people.
The
annual audit of every government department must be published for all to see.
We surely need this conference.
Mr.
CLEMENT UDEGBE, a legal practitioner, wrote from Lagos.
Vangaurd
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