Bringing down the curtain on National jamboree By Mahmoon Baba-Ahmed The five-month old controversial National Conference, hastily convened by President Goodluck Jonathan, was officially ended with the presentation of 22 voluminous documents to its initiator at an impressive ceremony in Abuja last Thursday. With that development the ball is now returned to the presidential court from where it could be lobbed to the National Assembly he had earlier sidelined, or seek the advice of the Council of States on what to do with them. There were altogether more than six hundred recommendations including a disputed 2014 draft constitution, some of which could be taken by the president in his daily strides to improve the efficiency of his administration to remedy the glaring socio-economic problems that plague the country. Other recommendations have to be channelled through the National Assembly for its imprimatur before they could become practicable. The fate of the documents largely depends upon what the President does with them since the ball is now in his court. However, in his remarks after receiving the documents President Jonathan drew a veil over the issue of referendum he had earlier hinted as the possible mean of determining the acceptability of the conference’s outcome. He had, instead, made a categorical remark about what may likely happen to the documents in the two legislative chambers. In that case it may not be possible for President Jonathan to have his way easily because his party could not comfortably muster the two-thirds statutory requirement before the passage of the bill containing the amendments proposed by the conference. Besides, there is another hurdle at the state houses of assembly most of which are totally opposed to the idea of Jonathan’s conference and its outcome. Reactions to the conclusions of the conference were varied as they were discordant. While some, especially southern delegates were quietly happy and satisfied others, mostly the core northerners were out rightly displeased, disappointed and annoyed. On so many occasions prominent leaders of the South-South zone, obviously reflecting the mood in their region, have called on their delegates to walk out if the conference was not ready to adapt to what they called true federalism by allowing each region of the federation to control their resources. They insisted that the North could not continue to dictate to the rest of the country by rejecting the fifty percent derivation allowed to the states with oil deposits and suggested a paltry eighteen percent instead. Nevertheless, while the southern delegates led by the South-South leaders at the conference were accusing the Northerners for frustrating their effort to get more allocation of the national cake, they were also worked up in frustrating the proposals for acquiescing negligible percentages for reconstructing damages done to the North-eastern states by terrorism and rehabilitating the victims as well as for prospective minerals richly embedded in most Northern States. To the southerners the Northern concern was a non-issue. Another problematic area that threatened the deliberations of the conference was a mysterious document tagged 2014 Draft Constitution which was prepared behind the back of the delegates when they were on a three-week recess. It was consequently rejected by Northern Delegates Forum at the conference as well as many other participants who saw the document as a clever ploy for introducing tenure elongation for elected officials. The document raised a lot of dust, causing commotion and deep mistrust especially of the conference’s leadership. Its Chairman, Justice Idris Lego Kutigi was accosted by angry members to explain the source of the strange document and how it had found its way into the hallowed chamber of the talks. The baffled and confused Kutigi offered an untenable explanation by saying that the document was prepared on the orders of President Goodluck Jonathan. But it appeared Justice Kutigi was not honest with himself because he recanted his earlier statement while presenting the final report to President Jonathan when he averred that the President had never interfered with the work of the conference. Must a judge contradict himself? President Jonathan spoke eloquently about the spirit of consensus that pervaded throughout the conference which facilitated commendable recommendations and assured that they would be implemented to the latter to convince the participants that there work was not going to be a waste of time. But by subjecting some aspects of the report to the Council of States wouldn’t that be a replication of the duties of the defunct National Conference which is also an advisory body? Most of the recommendations could very easily be taken care of by the executive arm of Jonathan Government since the problems they seek to address are nothing new and it has immense capacity to deal with them. It is imperative for the government to hit the iron decisively when it is hot by taking initiative promptly and act on the recommendations appropriately. The Council of State could give its approval for the use of some of the recommendation at its ephemeral sitting but it will take an awful lot of time for the recommendations to sail through the national and state assemblies with only three months to go before electioneering campaigns commence in full throttle.
Posted on: Fri, 22 Aug 2014 12:02:37 +0000
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