On The Outcome Of The ‘Confab Of Chaos’

By

Paul Mamza

From the onset the recently ‘concluded’ National conference tagged National Political Reforms Conference (N.P.R.C.), so-called, was meant to fail and achieve undue political achievements of it’s conscriptor and the master of the chess-game. In my earlier article “predicting the outcome of the National Political Reform Conference” Leadership, February 20, 2005, this column had predicted what has remained of the cobbled and uncanny euphemism of apprehensions. It dismissed the genuineness for a one-man/surrogacy show “for Obasanjo, of Obasanjo and by Obasanjo”. It was indeed an apt judgment. Sim ilar conferences were held in the past during military regimes prompting semblance of legitimacy through the use of Electoral College as against the latest during democratic rule in which the entire arm of legislative business was forced out-of-business. Before the idea was made of public through the inauguration of the Governor Ahmed Makarfi Committee on December 7^th, 2004 to chart a course for the conference, there was clear expressions of sordid intents that replayed itself later. At one of the series of NTA – FRCN programme entitled ‘The President Explains’, President Obasanjo had evacuated the Vice-President Atiku Abubakar’s earlier statement at a forum that the nation will convocate a National Conference before the end of the tenure of their government in 2007 with subtle denial and went ahead to persuade discussions at the Council of States’ meeting in its favour. The Presi dent, it seems was playing to the gallery and hording jives in order to take the people, particularly the North, unawares. The early preparations of other geopolitical zones even before the inauguration of the Makarfi’s Committee is a pointer that information about the convocation of the conference was in their hands for long and when the time came-up, the North was blackmailed to succumb with its ill-preparations.

The Source magazine screaming headlines National Dialogue: Break – up Signal!: The North threatens Boycott of February 14, 2005 is a clear interpretation of such blackmail. It succeeded. The wrangling even on membership from states was sublime and only the North that did not prepare an agenda before the conference. Some state Governors from the North did not help matters either. The Governor of Borno State Senator Ali Modu Sheriff, for instance while reacting to criticisms on one –sided selection of delegates responded with a s aving criterion – ‘merit’ as if merit has no objectivity and the President on his part had leisure times to nominate only loyalists of his government to discuss issues affecting all citizens. It was very clear even from the beginning that President Obasanjo had some hidden agenda to nab his ‘prey’ appropriately at the appropriate time, opting understandably to the idea with sinister intentions. The conference commenced with rumors of already prepared document smuggled-in to be adopted. Since then it has been a psychosomatic smuggling session during deliberations and conduct, driving sudden motives and wedged suspicions but we are not surprised, because even the idea of the conference, its intentions and its membership is all a ‘smuggled affair’. But why should a nation like Nigeria nefarious for actions akin to the conference of undefined character expect success with high impressions of seriousness when there’s no grain of seriousness at the organizing stage? Personally, my deliberate avoidance of the contending issues at the deliberations during the sessions of the conference was based on a simple logic that “two wrongs cannot make a right” and “a right cause must have a fabric of rationality”. The conference was both wrong and irrational to attract attention.

Nations that assess situations as they unfolded without mercantilist intentions do not fall into self-inflicted fatal accident of fate like Nigeria. Nigeria is the only country in the planet earth that no impossibilities of contempt exist even in the latent cusps of absurdities – that is why its citizens were rated as the most happiness in the entire world and yet the most corrupt in the universe and the same reason is responsible for why the cries of marginalisation and oppression are mere imitations of a smokescreen. No country without established rudiments of a rule of law like Nigeria would not be vulnerable to perfidies and incriminate hostage by power-mongers. Only negligible portion of the Nigerian society feels about the survival of others and the inherent ingredients of national integration and progress in genuine terms. Unfortunately, there are the God-fearing lot that would not like to indulge in ungodly competition for worldly glorifications through lure and lust. But even amongst thieves they are ethics. It is the defining factors of moderation that lacks in the Nigerian Political experiences especially in the Fourth Republic and particularly at the sessions of the ‘National Political Reforms Conference’ turning out a charade with all the exclamation of chaos. This piece is aimed at capturing the salient points as antecedents and its implications in future as it relate to issues of nationalism and corporate existence of Nigeria. Highlights would also be made on intriguing personifications, malignant intentions of selected elite and rational issues of radical departure from the apocalyptic misinterpretations of national problems as portrayed erroneously by all the contending forces at the conference. But without high stress of comprehensions it was very obvious that the entire conference layout was tailored against the North to destroy what remains of its political base and sociological sustenance. That informs government’s insistence of Governor Ahmed Makarfi (a northerner) to head the initial committee to disabuse minds and cajole the North into succumb of illegality. The issue of ban on all former military rulers (who incidentally are all northerners) from future politics, the political rancor and subtle enmity between the North and South-South over resource control deb acle and other anti – North agenda set for adoption explains the intentions with actions.

To be continued.

- Mamza a political columnist with the leadership Newspapers writes from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.