Member of the defunct Presidential Advisory Committee on National Conference, Mr. Tony Uranta, bares his mind on the ongoing stalemate at the National Conference over the resource control. He said that Niger Delta is not pleased with the proposed 18 per cent derivation, as he also threatened that the region may be left with no choice than to shut down oil wells, if immediate action is not taken to address the danger confronting the area. SEYE OLUMIDE reports. HAS the National Conference overcome the initial skepticism and uncertainty that greeted its convocation a few months ago? The conference has not ended, it will reconvene on August 4 to look at the reports and ascertain that resolutions are reflected in the reports as they were arrived at, without any smuggled items, or items taken out. I can say hopefully that when they reconvene it will not be only the reports they will look into. There will be issues concerning how to get the National Assembly to do the needful, by amending the Constitution speedily so as to allow for a referendum to be held as soon as possible; and, thus, empower Nigerians to ratify or dismiss the resolutions of the conference. I also anticipate that the conference delegates will be interested in looking at whatever fallout there might be between now and August 4. And, I think fallouts have already begun to manifest. The northern youths have come together and gone as Arewa youths to the new Emir of Kano, His Royal Majesty, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, to demand that there must be a Northern Republic and that they want to secede from Nigeria. In like manner, we are also aware that the three Southern zones plus the Middle Belt zone gave their irreducible minimum position, right from the beginning, as being that federalism is enshrined properly in the Constitution and the regions/zones are the federating units. Since, apparently, the regions did not at the end become the federating units, we are still going to be faced with the problem of the fact that these desires of over 50 per cent of Nigerians were opposed vehemently by less than 40 per cent of Nigerians. This latter group, as the whole world saw, introduced a threat-and-nuisance element into proceedings, right from jump. This aberration inadvertently encouraged by the Conference leadership was not firm on equitable discipline. If, for example, the Chairman of the Conference, Justice Idris Kutigi had called the Lamido of Adamawa to order, when the esteemed Royal Father threatened secession, that would have set a tone in line with Mr. President’s caveat as to the unity of Nigeria being sacrosanct, and all delegates would have been more circumspect in allowing others’ positions to be better accommodated. Now that issues like Federalism, Regionalism and Confederalism seem to have been temporarily placed on ice, it may force otherwise nationalistic people, who went in there with these as their minimum irreducible positions, to seek alternative routes to attaining those positions. Those alternative routes, I believe, will be a dangerous trend because they could lead to mass and diverse separatist calls, such as that by the Northern youths, evolving in Nigeria, with many groups crying out that they want to be free of the putative encumbrance of this contraption called Nigeria. I personally prefer today’s big and growing Nigeria to any smaller units; but I am a pragmatist. It’s not about what I prefer, or, what I would like; what I am scared of is what may really happen. And what may happen, going by what we are seeing, is that the nation may be plunged into a crisis of disunity and more insecurity. What do you think was responsible for the stalemate on the discourse over derivation? Partly, one of the problems about the whole process was the fact that derivation was even brought up at all. Derivation presupposes that the federal government still controls resources, and shares out what it wants to share to different sectors/zones/states including the sector from which the revenue is derived. That is not federalism. Federalism is not about a central government sharing out resources to units! Federalism means each unit/zone/state owning its resource, and paying an agreed-upon tax to the centre; and we have said repeatedly that the first Nigerian Republic was the last one where everybody felt at ease with one another. Regrettably, that was truncated by the January 1966 coup. It was a Nigeria where every region owned its resources. By the way, we have heard so much revisionism in the recent past from people that we would have considered very enlightened, especially from the Northern part of Nigeria, claiming that one region sustained the whole of Nigeria. That is an outright lie and a revision of truth because every region used its own resources to develop itself, and paid 50 per cent of the value of those resources to the Federal Government. It was autonomy that may have influenced the late Sadauna of Sokoto, Alhaji Ahmadu Bello to decide that he would remain as the head of his region and not be bothered about the centre, and decided to send Alhaji Tafawa Balewa to the centre to represent the North as the leader of Nigeria. This is because there wasn’t too much attraction in the centre, and this was based on the reality of what Federalism should be real ownership of resources. We are of the opinion that delegates should not have even accepted to deliberate on derivation. The focus should have been on one word: FEDERALISM! Discussing derivation per se was a departure from the Return-to-Federalism concept we had in mind when we, as the Nigerian National Summit Group (NNSG), started canvassing for this conference. NNSG’s desire for Federalism is important, because, as records show, NNSG was the prime canvasser for this 2014 Conference to hold. We brought people together, on different dates and at different fora, and it was agreed that the issue of derivation and “resource control” were not the nation’s problem, and, that the issue was federalism. What is federalism? We have heard many word definitions that are invariably similar, and have had the slight differences in how, for example, the United States of America and Switzerland practise federalism. The point remains that with Federalism, the federating units are the real control of resources, and not so much the central government. With Federalism we would be able to devolve powers to the extent that we would, for example, now have part-time legislators at the National Assembly, and we won’t be wasting up to 75 per cent of our revenues on recurrent expenditures, much of which are going to the legislators and executive members who really can’t operate without all the trappings of power and authority that they have around them, that have been hangovers of the military era. So, you have a man that has a large perks list and a retinue of aides that consumes tens of millions naira in a month. If we could have gone properly into the issue of Federalism, we would have found out that we had no need to discuss derivation. By the way, if we had to discuss derivation at all, we should not have separated derivation into oil-revenues derivation and non-oil-revenues derivation. It just shows that we have totally misunderstood our challenges! Every resource should have had the same derivation principle, because derivation is derivation. Then it would be the more attractive to those people who were opposed to the idea of an increase in derivation, if they saw it as not being solely for the benefit of one region. All would have recognised that it is in the interest of every zone and sector to have the derivation principle raised; or, better still, erased, which means let us go to true federalism and decide how much tax we want to pay to the centre. I know that the southern zones are ready to pay up to even 60 per cent as tax to the centre. But because people have got a misconception of what the issue of Federalism, derivation and resource control is all about, they were opposed to it because they, ignorantly, saw it as a solely Niger Delta-driven issue; and that was based on selective ignorance or intentional mischief. Would you then say the intention of the National Conference has been defeated? It depends on the perspective you are looking at it from. From the perspective of separatists, they have a reason to urge harder for separation. From the perspective of true nationalists, we were able to bring to the front burner certain truths that were swept under the carpet. We had a Lamido of Adamawa revealing at the start of the conference that he and his people would move over to Cameroun, that is secession. They are not going to move by walking away to Cameroun, they are going to say this landmass of ours has to go to Cameroun, which means they secede from Nigeria and get annexed by Cameroun. All these things they can achieve through the United Nations self-determination principle. So also the people in Enugu who went and criminally shot people dead and attacked Government House that is secession. COSEG, the militant arm of OPC is strongly advocating Oduduwa self-determination and they have said in a statement in the media they won’t accept the resolutions if they do not give autonomy to regions and allow for holistic devolution of powers. All these are issues we have known about for 10 years at a minimum, but nobody wanted to address them. We all pretended that it’s not happening. Well, the national conference has let Nigerians to watch it come to the fore, live on global television that we are different peoples, with different objectives and challenges, and we can only survive by addressing our different challenges in our unique ways. For example, there is a very strong likelihood that sometime within the next few weeks Niger Deltans will shut down oil production. It is not so much because they are fighting for resource control or derivation, but because there have been over five earth tremors in Bayelsa, Rivers and Delta in the last one month. And seismologists have identified the cause as being the irresponsible exploration of oil without reinjection of gas into those places to which the oil is taken. So, there is an imbalance created in this extraction. If these imbalances continue, it could lead to major earthquakes. Who will suffer directly the earthquakes? Niger Deltans! Those same Niger Deltans we are saying to that “we are not going to give you more than 18 per cent; and if you want us to give you the 18 per cent, you must also give us a National Intervention Fund, a very strange, selfish and crazy notion because what they called national is not supposed to even be national. It is something that will ostensibly benefit only Nigeria’s three Northern zones, if the Middle Belt is counted as a part of the North. It is not that the region is suffering from any natural disaster, rather its suffering from its own political rulers’ self-confessed ineptitude and the rest of Nigeria has to pay for the ineptitude of the ruling class in the North, to the exclusion of the South where there has been much ineptitude too. I think that is “me, me, me”-posture of some Nigerians is unfair, selfish, and a threat to our national unity. Unless a better solution can be found, the people of Niger Delta have decided that within the next few weeks we will come together to reach a consensus, and begin to work out an action plan to shut down production in the region. It’s a pity. It will affect all Nigerians, but it is better that it affects all of us, temporarily, than that Niger Deltans, alone, to die permanently! Would the Niger Delta region be pacified if the derivation of 18 per cent were agreed upon? The Niger Delta region did not ask for 18 per cent. The region is asking a return to the basic tenets of the 1963 Republican Constitution, which empowered every region to own its resources and pay up to 50 per cent tax to the centre. I do not think we will be happy with 18 per cent. We appreciate the fact there is an increase in derivation, but we wish to control our resources, through federalism; then, we will go back to our region and tackle the issue of mass thievery by government officials. Whether we do that or not, there is a likelihood that we will shut down production for our existence and survival sake, and not for political or economic reasons. But, a more equitable, just and fair Nigeria would help us see our way to resolving the issues of Niger Deltans’ suffering, caused by massive irresponsible oil and gas exploitation, with its concomitant environmental despoliation and others, that is now threatening to sink our communities. We shall not die, for the rest of Nigeria to live. Won’t that be an affront to the Federal Government? Let it be an affront to whomever it would be an affront. Is it not better for anybody to feel affronted than for us to be destroyed? The rate at which we are going, the Niger Delta is headed for destruction because nobody cares about what happens to the region; and, nobody wants to know that there are ways and reasons why we must begin to think as brothers and stop thinking as political parties, or religious bigots, or feudal irredentists.
Posted on: Tue, 22 Jul 2014 18:35:26 +0000
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