NIGERIA: IT IS CONFERENCE TIME by Banji Ayiloge - alliedglobal | on October 9, 2013 Out of the blues, the Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan announced that the nation will be allowed to hold a conference to redefine the nation’s problems. This is several months after the president has disavowed the same conference as unnecessary and possibly illegal. What has changed? Jonathan once gave his reasons for not thinking a conference was necessary on the premise that the National Assembly members were the representatives of the Nigerian people and therefore any constitutional changes should have emanated from them. Those were the position of the president as he emerged from being a vice president who was largely ignored and had no appreciation of the nation’s problems at that time. Since assuming office, Ebele Jonathan can be said to have developed a special appreciation for the Nigerian crisis of nationality bedeviling our country. Those young lads fighting from the Niger delta to those bombing and killing with Ak47 in the North have finally driven home the point that the country is yet to be a nation after Lugard forced us together as one British subject. Since the President announced the setting up of those to prepare the groundwork for the conference, Nigerians as usual have fanned in different directions offering opinions on what the President is trying to accomplish. Some have justifiably described it as a Greek gift which in the end will not do anyone any good but Jonathan himself. Well, Nigerians can be forgiven for holding that opinion. The reason is that former President Obasanjo set up a similar jamboree in the past in a futile attempt to bring about entrenching himself in office. For about seven months Obasanjo had hundreds of people gathered in Abuja paying billions of money to them that the National Assembly never approved for him. So when Nigerians now call into question President Jonathan’s apparent about face acceptance of a national conference, Nigerians can be forgiven for doubting him. After all, this president is a protégée of General Olusegun Obasanjo and may be borrowing from Obasanjo’s playbook. Does this mean that Jonathan cannot have a rethink of his earlier position? No, he may have come to appreciate the nation’s problem more as the North have vowed to deal with him politically by making the north a no go area for him in 2015. The best the nation can do now is to cooperate with him but be vigilante all the way. That leads me to the opposition leaders who have responded with less than enthusiastic embrace of the President new agenda. Some of these people have saturated the media with a call for such a conference in the past. If the President is calling for such a conference now, I think the only honorable thing to do is to welcome him to the fold with a big “we told you so” and then monitor his every move. That way, the nation can be moved forward.
Posted on: Wed, 09 Oct 2013 04:49:04 +0000
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