[highlight]On Thursday, October 30, 2013, Igbo National Conference (INC) presented its position on the planned National Conference to the Presidential Committee in Umuahia, Abia State. Comrade Zulu Solomon, the Secretary General of the pan-Igbo organisation tells THANKGOD OFOELUE in this interview how Igbo interests need to be represented wholly during the coming National Conference, and how they intend to achieve that.[/highlight] What is the position of INC on the proposed National Conference? The INC thinks that the planned National Conference is a very good idea, a very acceptable one. So many Nigerians have been calling for this National Conference for quite some time now, and there have been attempts by previous administrations to constitute and hold this National Conference. But the two attempts have been unacceptable to most Nigerians. First there was the attempt by the administration of Late General Sani Abacha, and then one by Chief Olusegun Obasanjo. Those two attempts have its hiccups. In recent times people have been calling for dialogue, discussions, conference, there was a call for dialogue with the militant groups of the Niger Delta that brought about the amnesty. There are also currently calls for dialogue with Boko Haram, and there are ones for dialogue with non militant groups that are also speaking out trying to air their views, and many eminent Nigerians have been calling for a dialogue with these groups. There is a lot of agitation from the South Easterners who feel marginalized, the Igbo. Igbo feels that since after the war, the Igbo man have not been given any meaningful place in the politics, in the economy, administration of this country. There are even Igbo groups who have been making a lot of calls for secession even after the civil war, like MASSOB and many other pro-Biafra groups. They have been making these calls to secede from main-stream Nigeria. So this conference is very important, it is for Nigerians to sit together and negotiate and agree on the fundamental issues that has to do with our unity. Staying together is not the issue, agreeing on how to stay together is very important. When you don’t agree on how to stay together, you might discover that you are actually planting a seed for disunity. Some people feel that when we sit together to discuss, the first thing we are going to discuss there is about separation. But it’s not true. For people to live together in the same house, they have to agree. There was no agreement on the way Nigeria was founded in the first place. Nigeria was a colonial foundation, and the colonial masters who founded Nigeria did not negotiate with Nigerians before establishing the country. They never sought the opinion of these people, they did not find out the way we have been living before they established Nigeria. They forcefully brought together people who were living independently together, and made them live together whether they liked it or not, and founded a boundary which they best understood among themselves. So it’s very important this conference is held. The National Conference is acceptable to INC, and we commend the Federal Government under Goodluck Jonathan for agreeing to this conference. There have been those who describe Jonathan as clueless, but this is the first time a president is making a genuine attempt to address the discordant voices of Nigerians. How would you rate this man Jonathan based on this? When people call a person, much so a president clueless or other kind of insultive adjectives, they have to define what they mean. When you say somebody is clueless, what do you mean? What is the exact meaning of cluelessness? A clueless person is supposed to mean someone who does not have a clue to what he is doing. But does the President appear like somebody who doesn’t know what he is doing? So, I have never really been able to understand what people mean by using such insultive adjectives on the President. The fact that the President does not belong to your political party, does not accept your own opinion, or does not do things the way you feel he should do it does not mean that he is clueless. What we should be doing in Nigeria is to take the President’s policies one by one. We could accept some, we could reject some. Wherever Nigerians have rejected some policies of the President, they are free to stand up and oppose such policies, and when the policies are acceptable, we can commend them. But we cannot have a blanket assertion about the President’s performances. For instance, in January 2012, the President removed petroleum subsidy, Nigerians came out and opposed the removal. It was very clear to the whole world that Nigerians were opposed to the removal. It’s a natural thing that in many countries, a policy of the president can be opposed by the parliament, just like in recent time when the United States parliament shut down the government because they were opposed to its policies. Even the British prime Minster has been opposed by the parliament, and the masses of the country. There have been demonstrations in so many countries, but that does not mean that the president of the country is clueless or is a fool. It simply means that, for that occasion, his position was disagreed with by a number of people in the country, maybe a majority, or a substantial number. So the use of that word clueless, I truly don’t understand what it means. I don’t understand why someone who is believed to have won an election in a particular country, meaning he was voted by a majority of people in that country, can be regarded as a fool. That means that Nigerians are also fools. Because for Nigerians to wake up one particular Saturday, and go out all day voting for an idiot means that we are even more idiotic than he is. So we have to be careful about the way we rate those who govern us. Jonathan’s election is believed by many Nigerians to have been better, much freer than many previous elections in Nigeria. That is why many people have commended Prof Attahiru Jega for having been able to conduct elections that was better than everything conducted during the Olusegun Obasanjo administration. Why should we now begin to use such drastic words on the president? Secondly, look at the pattern in which he has set out on the current national conference. Many people are calling for sovereign national conference. The INC has insisted that for that conference to be meaningful, it has to be made an independent national conference. Many other presidents would have held the conference without seeking the opinion of Nigerians. But this one has set out with an advisory committee that will advise the President on the modality for setting up the committee. When somebody sets up an advisory committee, it means that, ‘I am a single human being, I may not have all the ideas, please, you help me look at these things’. Most of those who are in that committee are not even politicians; they are not members of any political party. These are technocrats, these are experts. Most of them are people who have been in the agitation. Tony Uranta was in PRONACO, one of the earliest members who planned the Sovereign National Conference. Dr Okurounmu, chairman of the conference, we don’t know him to be a big time member of any political party. He picked these people and commissioned them to advise the President on how to constitute a national conference. Does that not tell you he has an open door policy? At least he is making an attempt to do something that could be acceptable to Nigerians. And Nigerians still stand a chance to make their contribution. If you think that there is an opinion you hold and you want it defended, you can come to the conference and its only when the conference begins to go the wrong direction, when the President begin to make suspicious moves, moves that appear to be undemocratic that we could begin to criticize the planned conference. There is nothing that the President has done to show that he has not been honest. There is nothing he has done to show that he plans to use it for political gains, which some people are alleging. INC has called that the conference should be independent. There should be a legal framework to establish the Confab, that legal framework is to ensure that the decisions taken at the conference become law, with or without the President’s consent. Because we have had many decisions taken in Obasanjo’s government we don’t even know on white paper. We don’t even know. Some others were taken in Abacha administration, and were never shown to Nigerians. Some were struck off; others were included in the 1999 constitution. But it was one man’s choice to accept or reject the decisions taken by all Nigerians in a conference. This time we have called for the independence of the conference, so that as soon as it is completed, whatever comes out of the conference automatically becomes law. What kind of advise do you have for the Committee members and the President himself to ensure a successful National Conference? Beside the issue of enacting a law to give legal backing to it, it should also be independent and that legal backing should be such that the conference should be assured of funding from the consolidated revenue purse. As well as ensure that the resolutions of that conference are enforceable in the court of law. The other is that there should be no ‘no go areas’. Nigerians should be allowed to discuss anything that has to do with their well-being. In fact, anyone who feels that he wants to secede should come and say it that he wants to secede. You might discover that at the end of it, no Nigerian will want to secede. All Nigerians are asking for is such a constitution that will guarantee the welfare of every Nigerian, no matter where he comes from- religion or tribe. We are not really interested in seceding; we are not really interested in breaking this country. All Nigerians are saying is that we have to have our opinions aired in the country where we belong. So there should be no restrictions, we should not be afraid that Nigeria will break up, it will not break up. And even if anyone wants to leave, it is our fundamental right. Nigeria has signed the United Nations Charter on the Rights of Ethnic Nationalities. It’s binding on all Nigerians, and is a part of our constitution. As long as we have signed that charter, it’s automatically a law in Nigeria. We love Nigeria so much, we also love Africa. It has almost become a norm for people to resort to violence before their opinions can be heard. The other day we had a demonstration to enforce the rights of pensioners. These are things that don’t happen in any other country. Somebody doesn’t have to go to the streets before he can be heard. Old men, retired senior citizens, who have served this country for between 35 and 30 years, we are talking about professional and trade unions, religious units, ethnic units, so many units in this country are displeased about how this country is going, and we need to air our views. But for us to have an articulate conference, how do we go about it? Selection of delegates to the conference should be democratic. Nigerians should air their views about who goes to the conference. We should not have a situation like some time in the past where the government had to select those who go to the conference. But this time, let people go back to their roots and contest elections to select delegates. These selections should be done based on senatorial zones. That seems to be the only political framework currently that has a wider representation. There should be six representatives from each senatorial zone. That is a suggestion by INC, and the election should be held by INEC. mydailynewswatchng/2013/11/05/go-areas-restrictions-confab-solomon/
Posted on: Sun, 01 Dec 2013 10:09:30 +0000
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