Confab Won’t Guarantee Nigeria’s Unity –Nwabueze Renowned Constitutional lawyer, Professor Ben Nwabueze on Monday stated that the ongoing National Conference would not guarantee the unity of the country. Nwabueze who spoke after the meeting of Igbo Leaders of Thought in Enugu, also faulted the contention over the voting pattern at the conference, saying it ought not to be an issue. He reiterated his position that ethnic nationalities were best suited to solve Nigeria’s problems, adding that the issue should be how to coalesce the 389 ethnic nationalities in Nigeria. “There is no Nigerian who does not belong to an ethnic nationality. It is a reality. It is sociological reality. We all know what the problem is. It is the problem of unity, how to coalesce the 389 ethnic groups in Nigeria. The day you find an answer to this, you solve Nigeria’s problem,” Nwabueze said. The former Education Minister maintained that the problem of voting pattern at the conference ought not to be there, “because the moment you say it, you play into the hands of those who want to frustrate everything.” Nwabueze continued: “It means that everything will be killed. If you analyse the composition, you see that Muslims have over 190, Muslims alone, not Northerners. “They have created what they call Northern delegates forum. It is there. It is not my own making. It is there and the Sarduana of Sokoto has led a delegation to the president, complaining about marginalisation of Muslims in the conference because they want to increase from 190 to more. “But even if you take only 190, which is about 30 percent, once 75 percent, it means 25 per cent left. Once you have 25, you can scatter everything. The Muslims are 30 percent already, not to talk about the North. “I would have thought that problem should not have arisen. They should have tried consensus. If you don’t try consensus, then you decide by absolute majority. By absolute majority it means it must be 492. But it is still majority, not two thirds, not 75 per cent. I heard that they have come down to 70 per cent,” he said. Daily Independent.
Posted on: Tue, 01 Apr 2014 09:56:13 +0000