It’s provocative to erect no no-go areas, says Ezeife EzeifeDr. Chukwuemeka Ezeife, former governor of Anambra State, spoke on the national conference, happenings in the polity ahead of the 2015 elections and Nigeria’s centenary anniversary, reports Nkechi Onyedika in Abuja. • Permanence of one Nigeria is goal of confab WHAT is your position on the proposed national confab? If we persist, a new Nigeria is in the horizon; a Nigeria where things work is about to dawn. I thank God that He gave the proportion to (President Goodluck) Jonathan to initiate action on a national conference. Some people are talking about election that is usually the concern of politicians; any good statesman should be talking of the next generation and not the next election. If there is a conflict between the election that INEC has scheduled and the conference, it should be resolved easily in favour of the conference. We must have time to put our house in order. Nigeria is persisting like a driver whose car is showing red and he insists on driving it. Election can wait because if the car is showing red, we stop and check it, correct what is wrong and then we get more millage than ignoring the red sign as if nothing happened. We should focus on making Nigeria permanent; the permanence of one Nigeria is the goal of the conference. Do the modalities released by the government represent what Nigerians are yearning for? The modalities are encompassing; all kinds of groups are represented. Everybody finds fault because the thing is so thorough. I thank God that we have people who had that patience and they did a good job of looking into every nook and cranny to help get something that would be acceptable to people even though I know that it is not everybody that would accept it. I think that the president’s nomination of about 109 delegates is quite high. The president is nominating 37 elder statesmen over whom he has no control. We can work with what we have and succeed with it. If we wait for a perfect situation, it doesn’t happen. Anybody who has any problem should come along to the conference with open mind and let’s jaw-jaw and see where it leads us. I am grateful to government, the committee on modalities and every response they had from every part of Nigeria. What is left is to focus on the problems we have and try to solve them. I don’t see obstacles we cannot surmount, be it time obstacle. They said the conference would last tentatively three months. If we finish it in two months, it is good. And it is not impossible because if you take 1994/95 report of Abacha Conference, you will see the main points; the 2005 report of National Political Reform Conference of Obasanjo, you will see the main points. Then this present government of President Jonathan put some of us together to review constitutional developments and we did a good job. If all these serious jobs are put together, packaged and given to members to go and study, we will not have serious problem. The only thing is that those areas, which the National Assembly is not qualified to touch, we want to decide on them: Whether we will keep having Bi-Cameral Legislature, or change to Uni-Cameral. We want to know whether we should continue with full-time legislature by which 80 percent of our expenditure is recurrent and only 20 percent is capital in a country that is just developing. We want to know whether the presidential system should continue in spite of the heavy cost. We want to know whether we should continue with very unviable tiny states or like 1995 envisaged, bring several states together under a zone and let them develop. They will come to approximate what we had under Eastern, Northern and Western Nigerian system; there will be competition among the people. Several areas of development are sensitive to economies of scale: power, transportation, and ecological problems; these are some of the areas. Some people talk about the National Assembly. The members of the National Assembly are like tenants; they are living in a house and are allowed to mend some cracks in the house but not to rebuild the house. So, any way you look at it, you will see that the Committee on Modalities has done a good job and President Jonathan is showing uncommon transformational leadership. A country that is ship-wrecked to rise from the waters and begin to move forward is what we are about to experience with Nigeria. THE modalities released by government indicate that everything would be discussed except the indissolubility and indivisibility of Nigeria. What is your opinion on this? If I had my way, that wouldn’t have been there but I was in a meeting where it was agreed. So, I don’t really have power to criticise it. Nobody is going to the conference to pull Nigeria apart, that is why it is not even necessary to add that, ‘indissolubility and indivisibility of Nigeria would not be discussed’ because once you are told not to touch something, that becomes very attractive. If they had kept quiet on it, nobody would have complained. Even now that they say, ‘don’t go near it,’ it can’t work. In fact, it is provocative to say don’t go near it. We will go near it if it becomes necessary, but it won’t be necessary. There is no no-go area. Once you come to the place and you declare the national conference open, all your groundwork, modalities, ‘don’t go near this,’ is gone. Even your 75 percent (voting clause), once we get there — we are the people’s people. If I am one of them, I will argue that this is Nigeria, not he Villa, or National Assembly. So, I know the issue of break up will not arise but saying don’t talk about it is actually telling people to talk about it because if it had not been mentioned, it would not be an issue. Some people have argued that for us to continue to live together, there is the need to define the terms of our co-existence… Exactly! This is what we are going to do. But you don’t tell anybody not to discuss break-up. Who wants to break up? Is it the Igbo, who has voted with his feet for one Nigeria and is investing everywhere; or the Yoruba, who controls commerce and industry in this country; or the Hausa-Fulani, who is feeding us and is gaining resources from Nigeria more than he is giving? No large group in Nigeria wants to move out of Nigeria and no small group in Nigeria wants to move out. God has answered the prayers of honest Nigerians and they are to go with open mind and strengthen the oneness of Nigeria. Should the outcome of the conference be sent to the National Assembly or be subjected to a referendum? I am familiar with talking and ending there; that is why most people believe it should go through a referendum. I am very much in support that the outcome of the conference should go through a referendum; there is no other way; any other way is wastage. After the conference, we go and confirm all we agreed upon with the people of Nigeria in a referendum. They will decide when our Constitution comes into force, and that is the only time you will put in people who will run it. Most people have said if this thing is going to go back to the National Assembly, it is not fair to them. The National Assembly defines some of the structural problems we had. I was a member of the 2005 National Political Reform Conference; I was, indeed, the Chairman of Power Sharing Committee. We did a lot of work and when it collapsed on the basis of resource control, I was part of the people selected to round off everything. We concluded everything, sent to the president, who sent to the National Assembly and that was the end of it. It is true that it was dead before it got to the National Assembly because there was a motivation for summoning the conference, which was the ‘Third Term’ pursuit by former President Obasanjo. But we killed that agenda early in the conference; so, there was nothing pushy. Even the one extra state, which 39 of the 42 leaders agreed to give to the Southeast, died as a result of the death of the Third Term Agenda. THE conference is coming on the heels of Nigeria’s Centenary; how far has the nation fared? This is why some of us are very happy with the conference. One hundred years ago, the British put us together but the British were only acting as tools in the hands of God. I think it is God who put us together and keeping us together is what we must do using the conference as a strategy. Some people say after 100 years, people are free to go separate ways. Nobody is going separate ways. We, the Igbo, have voted with our feet for one Nigeria and anywhere we are, we are developing it, commercialising it and we invest more out of home than at home. For whatever reason, Lord Lugard pushed through the amalgamation of Nigeria; it was part of God using the British colonialism and imperialism as tool in his hand. God created Nigeria for a reason; it just happened that the British were available to lend hands in doing so. Look at Nigeria, the largest single concentration of blacks on earth. The black man did every basic invention in the world; we started lagging behind because the climate was treating us very favourably. Whose responsibility is it to restore the respect and prestige of the black man? Nigeria has been a shame to black people. It is the manifest destiny of Nigeria to bring pride, and restore the prestige of the black man, and to do that, you must put your house in order and not be an object of ridicule. What’s your reading of happenings in the nation’s polity ahead of 2015? I am disappointed and unhappy. I appeal to all Nigerians, whether they are Christians or Muslims, to reconsider the issue of Muslim Brotherhood. Muslim Brotherhood has been banned in Egypt and Syria; today, the issue is completed. There is no single national leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC) that is not a Muslim. Of the seven governors who said they were forming the New-PDP, six were Muslims. It is not good for Nigeria that religion becomes a deciding element in our polity. I want Muslims who can see ahead to talk about it. Isn’t your view discriminatory? Yes, religion should not be a vehicle for forming a political party. If this is white and you call it white, is it discriminatory? It is a matter of if you are telling the truth or not. So, you are defining APC as another gathering of Muslim Brotherhood? Well, they did it; I didn’t do it. And I am just alerting Nigerians about it and appealing to them and others who are not inside, to see through and let’s find another way of building a second party to have two party system in Nigeria based on a little to the left, and a little to the right. What is happening in Nigeria is that some people said they are born to rule and when a person, who is not born to rule, according to them, took on power, they threatened to make the country ungovernable. Immediately after the 2011 elections, the Boko Haram started. When the Boko Haram could not achieve the objective, Political Haram started through the governors in the PDP and keeps expanding: APC, merger of New-PDP and APC. The people who are leaving PDP are the architects of the problems of the PDP.
Posted on: Fri, 21 Mar 2014 10:06:52 +0000
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