The Need For A Sovereign National Conference

There is a growing debate over whether the country should hold a sovereign national conference to decide its future in view of the endless agitations by various ethnic groups in this regard. While some ethnic nationality leaders in the Southwest and Southsouth geopolitical zones have been clamouring for the conference to hold, leaders in other parts of the country think otherwise.

Ijaw leader, Chief Edwin Clark, is in support of the conference while Alhaji Yahaya Kwande, a former Nigerian Ambassador to Switzerland, says we don’t need it. Kwande’s argument is that the country has invested so much resources in similar conferences in the past, with the more recent ones being former president Olusegun Obasanjo’s Constitutional Reform Committee which resulted in the slight amendment of the 1999 Constitution and the one before it, which was organised by General Sani Abacha to determine the sharing formula of earnings from the Federation Account.

Another dimension to the whole debate is the call for the restructuring of the country to address the existing lopsided revenue sharing formula that tends to favour the Federal Government to the detriment of communities where such revenue is derived.

The Pro National Conference Organisation, PRONACO, spearheaded by Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka and the late Chief Tony Enahoro and mooted the idea of a Sovereign National Conference after the restoration of democracy in 1999.

The group went ahead to organise it and after its conference produced what it called the People’s Constitution. This rich document has largely been ignored by successive presidents such as Olusegun Obasanjo, the late Umaru Yar’Adua and President Goodluck Jonathan.

We believe that past reforms were not far reaching enough that is why calls for a sovereign national conference have become even more strident in recent years. We also believe that the federating units of this country are treated like beggars by the federal government which appropriates so much revenue for itself and leaves the crumbs for the federating units which lay the proverbial golden egg.

This revenue sharing formula has resulted in grievances by ethnic nationalities, sometimes snowballing into violent confrontations between the state and militant groups.

The state of insecurity across the country and the recent demand for 45 new separate states by various groups and parts of the country indicate that there is an urgent need for a peaceful, all-embracing platform to be created to discuss salient, pressing national issues as they affect the people. Unfortunately, it is the absence of such a platform that has led some youths to take up arms against the state.

We believe that those who do not want the sovereign national conference are merely postponing the evil day. What are they afraid of? Afraid of losing their comfort zone?

Nigerians want to talk about their future. And the time is now.