17th December, 2013
Senator Femi Okurounmu, Chairman, Advisory Committee on National Dialogue, in this interview with AYORINDE OLUOKUN, speaks about the work of the committee and the various controversies surrounding the proposed conference
As somebody who has been at the vanguard of the campaign for the convocation of a Sovereign National Conference and later, National Conference, what was your initial reaction when the President announced that he was going to set up an advisory committee on national dialogue which you would chair?
I felt gratified. I felt a sense of fulfilment. I felt that if by the grace of God, through the efforts of this committee of which I am the chairman, we are able to give the President correct advice and the President accepts our advice and convokes national conference and the national conference is able to give Nigerians––nationalists, patriots, those who love and believe in Nigeria––the sort of nation that all of us are looking forward to, that can make all of us, no matter where you come from feel an equal sense of belonging to Nigeria, that can increase our love for one another, promote harmony among all the ethnic nationalities of Nigeria and make us feel so committed to our country that we are ready to die for it, and that is what will happen if we all have sense of belonging and things are being done right, if we can achieve all these, I will go to my grave a happy man.
Government gave you six weeks; was that enough time for your committee to do a good work because towards the end of the assignment, there were reports that your committee asked for extension?
We asked for two weeks extension and we were graciously given the two weeks extension and by the grace of God, our work is done.
So, when are we expecting the report to be presented to the President?
Our work is done, but it will depend on when it will be convenient for the President to receive our report.
What is your experience from the various public hearings your committee organised across the country on the proposed national conference? How would you describe the reaction of Nigerians to the idea?
Nigerians are very enthusiastic about it, I can tell you without any exaggeration. Initially, when the President announced his decision to convoke the national conference, just like it has been the case ever since the agitation that we should have a national conference started, there were sections of the country very much in favour and there were sections very much opposed to it. So, the agitation was not nationwide, but it was sufficiently across the ethnic barriers, because even in the North, there were people agitating for it alongside the people from the South. But still, there were important segments of the society that did not want it. So, that was the situation when the President announced it. There was hesitation from the section of the country that had all along opposed it. But since it was now a presidential decision, they reluctantly embraced it. And as you know, our committee was chosen on the basis of geopolitical zones, so, naturally, those who initially did not want it were represented on that committee. But the amazing thing is that after we started our work, and we started sensitising people, the demand for national conference now became overwhelming across the country, even in those areas where they had initially been very much opposed to it. When we went to every part of Nigeria, the ordinary people were very enthusiastic about it, they were happy. And they showed their happiness by coming to tell us what they expected from this national conference. They came with memoranda detailing what they expect from this national conference and that shows that maybe it is a section of the elite that didn’t want it, whereas the ordinary people of Nigeria across the board wanted it. And they showed their appreciation to the President, that for once, they have a President who has listened to the masses, who has agreed to convene a national conference. So we are very gratified with the very overwhelming response in favour of this national conference.
You talked about some sections of the country being at the vanguard of the agitation for national conference for a long time. But when the President announced the setting up of your committee, the political leadership of that same section of the country said the decision was ill-timed and they would not participate. Did this have any drawback on the work of your committee?
Fortunately, it didn’t have any drawback because politicians will always be politicians. There are very few statesmen, there are many politicians. But today, everybody wants to be a politician because most people think that the quickest way to make ends meet, to amass wealth today in Nigeria, is through politics. So when politicians speak, you have to rate what they say very carefully. Politicians are always looking at opportunities that will be available to them today; a statesman is looking at the nation in the future. And that is why they say a politician is looking at the next election, a statesman is thinking of the next generation. That is a quotation from a famous American politician.
So those who have been at the vanguard of the agitation for decades but now seem to be opposing it when the President announced his intention, I am sure they are thinking of the next election. It is an opportunistic opposition; that, ‘Haa! This is going to stand in our way.’ Maybe by their calculations, they are expecting to win the presidency in the next election and they think that this idea of a conference may divert attention from that election, so by that opportunistic calculations, they are opposing it. But those of us, especially across the masses who are very much in favour of it, believe that once we get the country right, for centuries Nigerians are going to benefit from it because nobody knows when next we will have a President who will be willing to convene such a conference.
We are lucky that this time we have a president who is willing to do it. We’ve been making the demand since the 1980s and every president we’ve had since then have turned deaf ears to those demands. If by chance we don’t take the opportunity now, nobody knows when next we will have a president who would want to listen and convene a national conference. And we all believe that a national conference is necessary for the stability and progress of Nigeria; to restore equity, justice, stability, it is necessary. So when we have an opportunity to have it, we must not let it go. And even those leaders who are opposed to it, their people are very much in favour of it. Across the South-West, everybody, big and small, men and women, minus the active politicians, are all in favour of it.
So, you don’t consider credible the arguments that this proposed conference may end up a futile effort like similar ones convened by former President Olusegun Obasanjo, late head of state, General Sani Abacha and so on, as argued by those opposed to the present effort. What makes this present effort different?
Already, there are differences which even a blind person should be able to see. There are differences between this one and the previous ones you have mentioned. To begin with, starting from 1976, the Murtala Muhammed/Obasanjo constitutional conference, it was convened with a view to arriving at a predetermined solution. They had already predetermined the kind of constitution they wanted when they set up the Constituent Assembly; so they just gave them a guideline of things they wanted them to consider. As we read recently in some correspondence from Nwabueze, Obasanjo and Co had already set up a committee to draft a constitution. So when they set up this Constituent Assembly, it was this constitution that they put before them. And in the Constitution, they had already decided the way Nigeria should be. So members of the Constituent Assembly were not free; in other words, they were in a straitjacket. And if you talk about the subsequent ones, like that of Abacha, which the military people organised for transition to civil rule, it was transition in which they themselves also wanted to become president, so they were drafting constitution to favour themselves. They were not drafting constitutions for the Nigerians.
The latest one, the 1999 Constitution, was prepared by Abacha. The constitution was not even shown to those of us who contested election in 1999 by the time we were contesting. It was not made public, so we contested in the dark, without even knowing what constitution would govern our operations. It was only after Obasanjo had been declared winner that they released the constitution. So the people of Nigeria had nothing to do with those constitutions; they were military impositions. And all of them were designed to achieve personal ends.
Then, if you look at the Obasanjo Political Reform Conference of 2005 of which I was a member, we were not free to look at all the problems of Nigeria and come out with solutions. Obasanjo had one purpose in mind – the Third Term Agenda. And he and his governors picked the members of the conference. He picked some as the president, he mandated the governors to pick some, and there were clearly stated no-go areas. I don’t want to go into details now. So, again, we were constrained.
This is the first time that we have the opportunity to have a conference in which the President has said: ‘You, the people of Nigeria, you will have an opportunity to meet, discuss Nigeria’s problems, come out with recommendations and what you think are the solutions.’ This is the first time that this kind of thing has ever happened since independence. Of course, the ones before Nigeria’s independence were organised by the colonial masters and we had very little say in them. So, this is our very first time as Nigerian people to come up with solutions that can be described as home-grown solutions to Nigeria’s problems; to set up institutions and set up what is going to be relationships between the various people of Nigeria, so that we can all be a very happy country.
You’ve been saying that there is no no-go area for your committee and for the proposed national conference.
We were not given anything like a no-go area.
But the President said the conference will not lead to break-up of Nigeria, which means that you cannot discuss the issue of Nigeria’s continued existence as one nation, as some people are demanding
Well, frankly, we have gone round the country and we have not met any serious group advocating for a break-up of Nigeria. People want Nigeria to be organised in such a way that we can all be happy and we can all live happily as a united country. People want us to have institutions that will make our unity a more perfect one, that will remove the feeling of first class and second class citizenship––a country in which all of us can be equal citizens, with equal privileges, with equal opportunities. Everybody realises that advantages of size, the advantage of being one country. These are the unique advantages that we have and nobody wants it to be broken up. We want to be able to exploit the opportunities that come from having such a large country if we can organse the country properly.
Will you also include in the recommendation of your committee that relevant aspects of some of the past conferences should be considered and forwarded to the National Assembly as bills to reduce the areas the conference will work on when it is convened?
When we have a conference of the people of Nigeria, it takes precedence over any other one. So if there are areas that have already been agreed upon, we would look at those areas and we will agree on it without any acrimony. If there is any area of disagreement, they will resolve those disagreements. There will be no such thing as no-go area for the conference, they will look at all the issues and they are the ones that set the agenda; we are not the one that set the agenda. In our going round, the people have set the agenda by telling us the things that want to talk about. We have just collated the things they want to talk about.
From your findings during your committee’s public hearings across the country and the memoranda submitted to your committee, what are key things Nigerians want to talk about?
The issues agitating the minds of Nigerians are known. Even as a journalist, I’m sure you can also enumerate them from your knowledge of public affairs. People have been crying about true federalism over the years; that’s nothing new. So the fight for true federalism continues. Well, there is no such thing really as true federalism, but what they are saying is that they want a really federal arrangement where the federating units can have areas of responsibilities properly assigned to them; that everything should not be concentrated at the centre. Right now, people feel that there is too much power concentrated at the centre, more or less depriving the federating units sufficient latitude to be able to develop their areas of authority. So the federating units are now like just mere appendages of the federal government – every month they go cap in hand to the federal government to beg for money. That is not the way a federation is supposed to run, so we have to look into that arrangement. We have to look at revenue mobilisation and revenue sharing. How do we mobilise revenue across the nation, that each area of the country can try to mobilise revenue in its own area and be less dependent on what the federal government doles out every month? How do we share responsibilities in a way that each federating unit will have authority to embark on vital development programmes and have the resources to do so within its areas of jurisdiction? These are some of the things that we have to look at.
These demands have been there and it is still one of the recurring demands across the country. Of course, the issue of corruption cropped up. Everybody is concerned about the level of corruption in the society and a lot of people believe it has to do with the presidential system of government we are operating. So a lot of people think that we should look at the system of government we are operating. Is it the best system for us? Doesn’t it promote corruption? Shouldn’t we reconsider what the British gave us when they were departing? At least, those of us old enough experienced the parliamentary system. In most of the Commonwealth countries like us, it is the parliamentary system that is in operation; even in most of the European countries today. Even when they have a president, it is still the parliamentary system. So those are some of the common problems that we encounter. Of course, there are some peculiar problems which everybody again knows about – the problem of indigenes/settlers. Who is an indigene and who is a settler of any one particular state? What are the rights of Nigerians, how can we guarantee such rights? These are some of the problems. I cannot enumerate all of them, but I have just given you some examples.
Do you think these diverse demands can be aggregated in a way that will ensure that the viewpoints of all segments of Nigerians are adequately reflected?
That’s the whole idea of the conference; at least the conference will have agenda. When the representatives get there, they will look at the agenda one by one and take decisions, put them together and that will be the outcome of the national conference.
There is this fear that if representation at the conference is on ethnic basis, some fairly homogeneous ethnic parts of the country like the South-West and the South-East may be short-changed. Do you consider this in your report, and what are your recommendations?
Well, you see, people always have their fears. Our committee is to look at all these fears and then, try to advise the President on what to do. And we looked at all the fears, we looked at all the demands and we have put together what we think is the best advice to the President. I don’t want to preempt the recommendations of our committee by telling you this is what we have advised. But like I said, our job is done, depending on whether the President wants to reveal it or not. Then Nigerians will know what we have recommended.
You seem to be optimistic about the potential of the proposed conference to tackle the myriad of problems confronting the country. But some Nigerians are not convinced about the sincerity of President Jonathan, especially since he said the resolutions of the conference will be submitted to the National Assembly. How convinced are you about the sincerity of the President?
It is not for me to go to his mind and know how sincere he is. There is no way to judge a man’s sincerity from his face. But one thing I know is that if I have been looking for something for more than 20 years, struggling for it and somebody comes and offers it to me, I will not question his sincerity, I will grab it. It is for me to grab it, no matter what his intention is, because it is what I have always wanted.
Did your committee also consider the fear of those who said the conference may be a hindrance to the 2015 general elections?
You see, I don’t belong to any political party. I am not a PDP or APC man, and these are the two major parties of the day. And that is why you will notice that in all our going round, we have not involved politicians. We have not asked political parties to tell us their views because the moment you involve politicians, you will muddy up the issues because all the politicians are thinking of are elections. But we are thinking of the future of Nigeria. So I don’t want to get involved with politics and elections because like I said, this is something that is going to make Nigeria a better country for centuries. Americans have had their constitution and they have been operating it and with minor amendments, it has served them. We too can have a constitution that will give us a solid base which our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren can be proud of.
But if it is necessary to postpone the election because of the conference would you recommend it as some Nigerians are arguing?
That is not part of our terms of reference.
There is a lot of controversy over your committee’s outing in Benin; what really happened?
I don’t think there is any controversy about what happened in Benin. We have explained it. What happened in Benin is what can happen when a leader is speaking out of sync with what his people want. When a leader is speaking and he is not on the same wavelength with his people, that is the kind of things that can happen. During our visit to the South-South, we made two stops: one in Calabar, one in Benin. And all over the South-South people were free to come to either centre. So the people in Benin were not just Benin people; we had people from Rivers who found it convenient to come to Benin, we had people from Delta, Bayelsa who found it convenient to come to Benin to present their views. I have to give you that background.
Normally, when we go to a centre, we pay courtesy call on the Governor out of respect. So, we had paid courtesy call on the Governor earlier in his office and as we expected, because it is their party position, he told us that he didn’t think that anything would come out of the conference. He spoke for more than 30 minutes, telling us how he didn’t think anything would come out of the conference. We, as a committee, were only there out of courtesy, so there was no reply or comments from us. After listening to him, we thanked him very much. And we began to hold our interactions with the people from Benin and all these neighbouring states; they were so happy to be there to present their positions. They were presenting their positions. Then after a while, Oshiomhole came in and, as the Governor, he sat next to me. After listening for about 15 minutes, he said he would like to say a few words; we gave him the floor. Then he went to the podium and started to repeat the kinds of things he had said to us. That the whole thing was just to mislead the people; that nothing can come out of the conference; that it is a waste of time.
When he started saying that, the people who had been staying for hours to make their position known got irritated, they didn’t like what they are hearing and they began to shout, ‘No, no, no,’ and to heckle him. That is what happened. The one that everybody seems to be hanging on to is the fact that one us, unfortunately, also stood up to join in the heckling. That is the unfortunate thing that happened. But it was the people themselves who were heckling the Governor and many of them surged forward and wanted to stop him from talking. In fact, he could not continue his speech, he had to stop and go. That shows you how popular with the people the conference is.
Did the non-participation of the Governors from the South-West in any way affect the input of the region to the work of your committee?
I have told you that this is not a conference of the Governors. It is a conference of the people. At the Lagos venue, everybody who is anybody in the South-West was there. Even some of those who took part in Akure also came to Lagos. All the leaders of the socio-political groups, the Afenifere, the Yoruba Unity Forum, the Odua People’s Congress, the Yoruba Assembly, all the groups that have been at the forefront of the agitation for the national conference, were there. Even elder statesmen like Chief Tunji Braithwaite were there to present positions. Baba Gbonigi was there to present his position, Chief Adebanjo was there. So everybody who was anybody was there. The governors were not expected to be there. It is the people that we want to listen to, not the governors. In any case, the Yoruba have for a long time had their positions, even documented. You may have come across the document called the Yoruba Agenda. If you look at that Yoruba Agenda, you will see the signatures of some of the people now opposed to the national conference there. The Yoruba have already articulated their positions and documented it. So we don’t need the governors reall; the people can articulate their positions.
What is your opinion on the letter written to the President by Chief Nwabueze that the Federal Government should set up a committee which will draft a constitution to be presented to the national conference when it is convened as a working document?
Fortunately, Chief Nwabueze is not a member of our committee. He was nominated to serve on it, but he said he was too sick to serve and somebody else was appointed to take his place. And the letter was not directed to us. He is an old person, I respect him. I don’t want to comment on what he has done. But since he didn’t write to us, we are not concerned at all by his letter. The letter has no effect on our job. We did our job the way we have been mandated by the President and forwarded our recommendation to the President. So the letter is between him and the President. And the public has been reacting; that is also between him and the public. It doesn’t concern my committee at all.
But how would you feel if the report of your committee was not used at the end of the day?
Certainly, I would feel bad, but what can I do? There are so many people whose reports have not been used and they have not committed suicide.
And this particular government has the unenviable reputation of setting up committees and dumping their reports on the shelf to gather dust.
But I think that the President should think twice before dumping our report. In fact, he should not dump our report. Like I have said, his intention to convene a national conference and setting up our committee [is laudable]. And our going round the country has in itself generated public enthusiasm. A lot of Nigerians are now looking forward to this conference; a lot of hope is on the work of our committee and the subsequent actions of the President. So the President has a stake in holding this conference. He has a stake not to let down the people, not to let down the expectations that he himself has now aroused in the people. It is in his own interest not to let down the people.