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Scoring The National Confab By Anthony A. Akinola
One felt rather sorry for Justice Nikki Tobi, Chairman of the National Political Reform Conference, when he literally begged delegates to endorse some contentious positions as their present for his then impending 65th birthday. It was like asking a patient suffering from cancer to please accept treatment meant for malaria just to have on record that he or she had been attended to by a doctor. Contentious issues will always remain contentious until they are resolved by mutual compromise and agreements.
The National Political Reform Conference can be adjudged as successful, insofar as it provided the platform for the articulation of issues of importance to the various geo-political zones and ethnic nationalities. The delegates were well-respected members of their various constituencies and it is doubtful if representation via the electoral process could have produced a better outfit. The issues they highlighted can now be further appraised by those who by virtue of their constitutional positions have the powers to translate enlightened opinions into veritable legal documents for political practice.
The most disturbing of the contentious issues is that which has to do with resource control. The fact that oil is today the main source of our national survival cannot be over-exaggerated, so also is the fact that the oil wealth comes mainly froma section of the Nigerian community, the South-South geo-political zone. The oil producing region now insists on being paid 25% of revenue from oil, a percentage they would like to graduate to 50% over a 5-year period.
Their insistence on this position gives the writer much joy in certain respects. The first ground of support emanates from the belief that if the oil wealth had resided somewhere else, the issue of how much they wanted as payment would not have been “contentious”. If the oil wealth had resided in the territory of one of the so-called majority ethnic groupings the so-called minority groups might have been made to feel grateful for the tiny crumbs that come in for them. The second ground of support is based on the sufferings which the oil producing areas have to endure due to environmental degradation. The effect of this on agriculture, fishing and even human health, cannot be over-stated. Finally, it is believed that increased revenue to the oil producing states may actually compel the non-producing ones to look inwards and develop other revenue earning sectors of the economy such as agriculture, industry and tourism. The fact that one region of the Nigerian society might actually be richer than the others is one inevitable aspect of federal relations we must learn to grapple with.
The tenure of the president, state governors and local government chairpersons is another contentious issue of interest. The tenure of the president, in particular, was further made contentious by the fact that the Obasanjo presidency was associated with the idea of a six-year single term for the president. This had been taken, in some quarters, as a devise by President Olusegun Obasanjo to extend his tenancy at Aso Rock. Had consistency been the forte of Obasanjo, such suspicion would not have enjoyed much attention because the six-year single term tenure was indeed the singular recommendation General Olusegun Obasanjo submitted to the Political Bureau instituted by the dictatorship of General Ibrahim Babadgida in 1986. President Obasanjo could have asserted that position in 2002 when the idea of single term presidency resurfaced with a vengeance. That would still not have stopped him from seeking re-election in 2003 because the constitution was on his side.
That the issue of the tenure of the president did take a North versus South divide is but one aspect of parochialism in our national politics. Insistence on two terms by some delegates from the North hinged on the argument that the current president who is from the South is in his second term of office and it would be unfair for one from the North not to enjoy the same status. For such a position to come from delegates whose region had dominated the leadership position for so long, it was one parochialism that was not in the best interests of national unity. This writer argued earlier that the endorsement of the principle of leadership rotation between the North and the South has effectively sealed the argument in favour of the single-term proposal. Otherwise it does not make much sense that a president is seeking re-election when challenge to his or her position can only come from the same zone. It is like one zone wanting to produce two presidents before another zone actually takes its turn.
It is not as if one is biased towards a section of the Nigerian society. Any nationalist of the mode of Colonel Abubakar Umar will agree that the concept of “one North, one people, one destiny” handed over by Lord Lugard and which became the article of faith for the ethnocentric Northern People’s Congress (NPC), has never served the cause of Nigerian unity. The oneness of Nigeria is better served with the geo-political zones developing their individual characteristics. Fed up with the constant references to North and South and what the concepts connoted in Nigeria, the late Mr. David Williams, editor of the London-based West Africa magazine from 1945 to 1978, once suggested I advise the military to ban people talking of North and South. I told him that the only way to tame this divisive cleavage was by putting appropriate structures in place but will the beneficiaries of the cleavage system allow such structures to work?
Now on the issue of whether or not to ban former rulers from seeking the coveted office of president, there was this friend of mine, an enthusiastic supporter of General Ibrahim Babangida, who strongly believed that his idol would be the next president of Nigeria. He sought my opinion on what should be the title of his proposed book celebrating the second coming of Babangida. I did not pause to think and we both laughed when I told him the title of his proposed book should be “O, ye fools, I am back”.
The culture of banning belongs to military authoritarianism; however, reflecting on what the power of stolen money can do in a corrupt electoral system, the proposed ban would appear not to be out of place. The well-informed Americans know that a Richard Nixon has no moral right to even dream of wanting to become their president for a second time, but one cannot be too sure of what a Nigerian population humiliated and humbled by poverty will do when a worse than Richard Nixon “politician” appears at the corridors, in the full regalia of a Father Christmas, dishing out bundles of crisp naira notes!
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