Braithwaite: National Confab Will Succeed

A Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Dr. Tunji Braithwaite, on Friday, said that the planned national dialogue for Nigeria would not fail.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Braithwaite said this while speaking at a consultative forum of the Presidential Advisory Committee on National Dialogue in Lagos.

NAN reports that the Committee led by Sen. Femi Okorunmu met with various ethnic, civil society and pressure groups in Lagos to seek advice on the conduct of the planned dialogue.

The Commıttee, set up by President Goodluck Jonathan on 1 October  was to facilitate the convening of a natıonal conference by  the Federal Government.

Braithwaite told the forum that “the planned dialogue is divine and cannot fail.

“Previous conferences may not have worked out but that does not mean that this one will fail.

“I have looked at the oppositions’ reasons and their reasons for thinking the confab will fail and realised their grounds lacked conviction,” he said.

According to him, participation at the confab is a lifetime opportunity that must not be missed by any ethnic group or others in Nigeria.

“Anyone condemning this conference because it is put together by President Jonathan is wasting their time because there is no going back on it,” he said.

Braithwaite, a former presidential candidate of the National Advanced Party (NAP), noted that Nigeria could not afford to remain in the artificial conception given to it by the colonial masters.

“53 years after, Nigeria is still celebrating enslavement,” he lamented.

Braithwaite noted that the 1999 Constitution that is still in use in Nigeria was only “fit for the dustbin”.

“Nigerians must evolve their own constitution. We expect all leaders to support any move to give Nigeria a new and better constitution,” he added.

NAN also reports that at the forum were representatives of the Afenifere and  the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC).

Others were the Yoruba National Assembly, Campaign for Democracy and the Yoruba Unity Group.