Guardian NATIONAL CONFERENCE WILL FAIL, SAYS ACF Published: Wednesday, 30 October 2013 22:49 Written by From Saxone Akhaine (Kaduna), Abiodun Fagbemi (Ilorin), Gordi Udeajah (Umuahia) and Kelvin Ebiri (Port Harcourt) • MOSOP seeks trust fund for oil communities • Igbo leaders want all-inclusive dialogue, reject N’Assembly’s role • Northern Christians compile grievances FOR the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), the national conference being planned by the Federal Government will fail like similar exercises whose resolutions were never implemented in the past. At its joint meeting of the Board of Trustees (BoT) and the National Executive Council (NEC), chaired by Gen. Jeremiah Useni (rtd), ACF insisted that the conference would not achieve any positive result that would develop the nation. In a statement after the meeting, the National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Anthony Sani, said that the Arewa elders “deliberated on many issues of national importance.” He said that the northern leaders “considered the decision of the Federal Government to convoke a national conference/national dialogue against the backdrop that the decisions of past conferences are yet to be implemented by the appropriate authorities. The ACF therefore expressed doubt that the outcome of the current exercise would not suffer the same fate.” But he noted that “as a mark of good faith in the hope that real issues of real concern to real Nigerians may be discussed, the ACF urged northerners to participate in the national conference/national dialogue in the interest of national solidarity that goes with relative pluralism. “Towards this end, only delegates with proven intelligence and patriotic courage should be encouraged and supported to attend the conference.” Sani said that the ACF urged the government to use local government areas as constituency units for representation at the conference, and that one delegate per local council area should be the basis. He stated that the joint meeting “received and considered the report on the adverse effect of proliferation of groups claiming to speak for the same North”, and canvassed the need to speak with one voice for effective performance. On its part, the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) has urged the establishment of a trust fund to cater for the developmental needs of oil-producing areas. MOSOP said that its suggestion was born out of the understanding that despite the increased resources that had become available to the various tiers of government, the unaccountable manner in which the 13 per cent derivation funds had been managed had deepened poverty in oil-producing communities. In a document prepared for the national conference and made available to The Guardian, MOSOP President, Legborsi Saro Pyagbara, said that the people of the Niger Delta, particularly those from oil-producing communities, rightly believed that they had not benefited from the increase in revenue which had taken place since 1999. According to him, although there are other parts of the country which are suffering from fiscal abuse, the combination of environmental degradation and the exploitation of finite resources without recompense has continued to foster a burning sense of injustice which is at the core of grassroots sympathy for demand for “resource control.” Pyagbara stressed that Ogoni people believed that in so far as oil continued to be the dominant resource in the country, Nigeria’s economic and political stability would continue to be shaken unless the issues underlying the Niger Delta agitations were addressed. “It is our view that the 13 per cent is hopelessly inadequate; that the much-needed upward review will only be acceptable if complemented with affirmative actions to ensure that local communities afflicted by the vicissitudes of oil exploitation get direct control of the resources for their own development. These communities should not only be able to determine the priorities of their own development but also have the right to determine what development to them is,” he said. The group advocated the dismantling of the existing state structure and artificial geo-political zones, which, according to it, do not represent any genuine collective interest of those in each zone. According to MOSOP, while the adoption of the so-called six geo-political zones may serve the interests and thus appeal to the majority tribes whose zones comprise homogenous people, it serves to erect another level of marginalisation for peoples in zones comprising different peoples like the Ogoni, the Annang and the Ekpeye. To this end, MOSOP called for a constitutional status for distinct and endangered minorities and indigenous peoples who should be granted autonomy to run their own internal affairs, especially in the areas of economic and social development, education, health, environment and culture. Pyagbara advocated the replacement of the presidential system of government with the parliamentary system with bicameral legislatures in each of the tiers of government composed of part-time members in order to make them more responsible to the people. According to MOSOP, it is regrettable that since independence, the country has shied away from creating a federation that truly responds to its diversity, instead preferring to use the “federating units” as avenues for political and fiscal multiplication of the dominance of the majority tribes. This situation, it insisted, was worsened by the existence of political elite within the majority tribes who served their own people and the nation poorly whether under military or civilian rule. “The Ogoni people believe that the stability of the country will be tested not by how the majorities are treated but more by how the indigenous/minority communities and other vulnerable groups are protected. Any structure of the federation that perpetuates the current system in any form or guise will certainly be unsustainable. Injustice will continue to promote resistance, conflict and a growing tide of disaffection with the status quo. The status quo where political elite have barricaded themselves from ordinary people and in many parts of the country are afraid to even walk the streets of their villages is both a symptom of political malaise and a state of affairs which serves no one,” MOSOP said. At one of the South-East zone’s consultative fora on the national conference held in Umuahia, Abia State, by the National Dialogue Advisory Committee, there were calls that there should be no no-go areas, and that the outcome of the conference should not be ratified by the National Assembly. The committee, led by Senator Femi Okurounmu, said that this national dialogue was intended to be one with a difference because it would be done by Nigerians and not imposed on them by anybody, adding that it was in this regard that his committee was consulting widely with all stakeholders on the modalities. In his address, Abia State Governor Theodore Orji stressed the need for the success of the conference, saying that expectations of Nigerians were very high. Presenting the position of Abia people, Prof. Joe Irukwu called for fiscal federalism, rotational presidency among the six geo-political zones and a single six-year tenure for president and governors. He added that the outcome of the conference should be subjected to a national referendum and thereafter legalised by the National Assembly. In a presentation by its President, Chief Jek Onuoha, the Igbo Renaissance demanded the payment of N3 trillion to the Igbo to cover the cost of the war on Igboland, payment of the full benefits to date of all Nigerian soldiers of Biafran extraction who were dismissed /disengaged after the war, and the review the £20 flat rate paid Igbo irrespective of what they had in their bank accounts after the civil war. Other demands are: to immediately review the abandoned property issue and release the items to their original Igbo owners, pay adequate compensation, build/construct two international airports and seaports in Igboland within the next six months and secure an irrevocable agreement that the presidency of Nigeria shall come to the South-East after the eight years of President Goodluck Jonathan. Besides, officials of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) have said that the national conference would afford Christians an opportunity in the North to redress their marginalisation by some state governments in the North. The Director of Planning and Strategy of CAN, Elder Sunday Oibe, said in an interview in Kaduna yesterday that the 19 northern states and Federal Capital Territory (FCT) CAN was already compiling its grievances to be presented at the conference. He said that one of the grievances the Christians would bring to the conference “is they took our schools forcefully. And the same governments that took our schools are now using the same public funds to build other Muslim schools. So, we want the conference to open.” He added: “Everyday, Christians in the North are being marginalised; minority tribes in the North are being marginalised. If you go to Kano, Sokoto, Niger, Jigawa, Zamfara, Maiduguri, Yobe, Adamawa, Bauchi and other places in the North, Christians and the minority tribes are being marginalised on daily basis. “Look at what is happening in Tafawa Balewa. For instance, a Christian woman member of Bauchi State House of Assembly has been suspended for a year now, and the governor is turning the other side, pretending as if he does not know what is happening. This is a man who swore to protect and defend everybody, yet such a thing is happening with impunity in his state and nobody is doing anything to defend the woman because she is a Christian. “Are you not aware that the state government has no power to relocate the headquarters of Tafawa Balewa? But they have done so with impunity and relocated it to another place. Just to disenfranchise the Christians from the area in an attempt to marginalise them further. So, as Christians in the North, we want the entire world to know through the national conference the marginalisation we are suffering.” But the Speaker of Kwara State House of Assembly, Razak Atunwa, has described the composition of the Presidential Committee on National Dialogue as “ill-timed.” He urged Jonathan to tackle headlong the problem of insecurity in some parts of the country. In an interview yesterday, Atunwa told reporters in Ilorin that the conference might not have been necessary if the government had put in place basic social amenities for the people. He added that the conference could have been best convened after the general elections of 2015.
Posted on: Thu, 31 Oct 2013 08:49:12 +0000
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