Dtruthofdmatter David Tinubu Takes President Jonathan To The Cleaners Though I remain an unrepentant supporter of a genuinely Sovereign National Conference, I am suspicious of this present concoction because it is half-baked and fully deceptive. Government’s sincerity is questionable, the timing is also suspect. Now that this government is sinking in a pool of political and economic hot water of its own making, it seizes hold of the national conference idea as if it were a life jacket. Today, there are enough contradictions and confusion to sink the conference even before it starts. Yet, the government forges on. In that same October 2013 write up, which I made public, I articulated my position on the national conference being organized by the Jonathan government. The issues I raised remain. The fears I mentioned abide and the demands I made on the Jonathan government to treat some long standing issues before rushing us into another jamboree are fundamental to moving this country forward. For the benefit of this important occasion and audience here today, let me repeat some of what I said… This government has not the honesty, foresight, tolerance and objectivity to hold a National Conference of any type. This government is so partisan and parochial; it can’t even hold its own party together, how dare it even think it can organize a national conference that lives up to its name by being truly representative of all the nation’s constituent parts. At most, all they can conduct is a conference comprised of one section of their party and those shell, artificial civil society groups that purport to reflect the public’s mind yet do nothing but spew government propaganda and get paid good Naira for their service. This government cannot hold a National Conference anymore than a comatose man can stand and hold up a candle that the rest of us might see our way to a better Nigeria. Before embarking on new public relations ploys to whitewash its tarnished record, the government should treat some long outstanding issues and matters. This government cannot give what it does not have. If the conference must be held now, we must return to the spade work already done by the Obasanjo government in the aspect of constitutional review. Let the Jonathan government bring it out, remove the third term toxic component and set up a technical review committee to examine the 118 recommendations therein. We must continue from where we disagreed. Nation building is a progressive work and to totally jettison the considerable spade work already done is to set back the hands of the clock. Time is not on our side. Secondly, this government should implement the Uwais recommendations on electoral reforms. That report was the work of imminent Nigerians and it was done after widespread consultations to constituencies far and wide. We all know that our electoral system is broken and unfair. If the President has done nothing to fully implement this corrective report that would fix a system so blatantly broken, why would he implement recommendations of national conference if those recommendations do not suit his narrow purposes? The government should first implement this important work in order to demonstrate to Nigerians that it can hold and honour the outcome of a National dialogue. This government should do so to show that it has nothing to hide and is willing to engage in the upcoming electoral contest on a level playing field. This government must first show good faith for Nigerians to believe them. President Jonathan is not the man to give Nigerians a true National Conference. He can only give us a “Jonathan conference” as bitter icing on the sour cake his government has become. This government lacks the presence of mind and the decency to implement a national conference. This administration has not achieved any tangible transformation because it has no concrete goals. Now it tilts and staggers under the weight of insecurity. Claims of transformation and of building an economy that is robust and institutions of democracy, by the President shows someone who believes fiction is more important than fact and imagination is more genuine than reality. Both in timing and in style, previous administrations adopted the same tricks of National Conference as a framework to structure their agenda to which people presented memoranda and attended plenaries before realising it was a trick. - Being an excerpt of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s Remarks at the 8th Anniversary of the Passing of the Late Human Rights Activist, Dr. Bekolari Ransome-Kuti.
Posted on: Thu, 13 Mar 2014 07:21:05 +0000
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