WOULD NIGERIA REVIEW OF THE ABURI TRANSCRIPT HELP IN THE SOVERIGHN NATIONAL CONFERENCE BEING CLAMOURED FOR?

WOULD NIGERIA REVIEW OF THE ABURI TRANSCRIPT HELP IN THE SOVEREIGN NATIONAL CONFERENCE BEING CLAMORED FOR?

Am living in surprise that the same people whom their fellows trashed out and never gave credence to the constitutional chap of the type envisaged by Ojukwu back at Aburi are now beginning to request for Sovereign national conference.

Notable Nigerians in the likes of Social critic and political activist Prof TAM DAVID WEST and others are kicking against a National Conference without sovereign power advocated on Tuesday 17th Sept. 2013 by Senate President DAVID MARK

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Prof. TAM DAVID WEST

Constitutional lawyer and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) Prof Itse Sagay said Mark needs some

education about why the conference must be sovereign.

Prof. ITSE SAGAY (SAN)

He said: “If it is National Conference without sovereign powers, it is okay, it is a good development. Though, Sovereign National Conference is preferable. There is no need for us to hold a conference that its decision would not be binding. He further stated that the conference should address: the issue of ideology, that is, what should be the ideological direction of Nigeria; the relationship between the federating units as regards issues of economy and political power distribution, production of a new constitution for the country and the issue of social welfare programme for Nigerians.

Civil rights activist SHEHU SANI described Mark’s suggestion as diversionary because whatever decision taken a such conference would not be binding.


  SHEHU SANI

He said: “Nigerians are not just asking for a conference but a sovereign one. It is not the usual conference that come out with a communiqué but a conference with a resolution that is binding on the Nigerian people

The great Ikemba

CHUKWUEMEKA ODUMEGWU OJUKWU saw all these in the 60’s. He tried all he could to avert all the circumstance befalling the present Nigeria state. In his words “It is better that we move slightly apart and survive, it is much worse that we move closer and perish in the collision.” Nigeria may have saved itself a substantial amount of the subsequent bloodshed that ensued over the last four decades

By failing to implement the Aburi decisions, Nigeria missed a golden opportunity to find a constitutional arrangement acceptable to all of its constituent parts. It is a sad commentary on the lack of progress that Nigeria has made since Aburi that the issues discussed then (over 40 years ago) are still being argued over today. Back in 1967, the Aburi decisions were not implemented for one primary reason: oil. Nigeria's greedy power brokers did not want a loose constitutional arrangement that would deprive them of the vast revenues which Nigeria earns from its crude oil exports. Hence Nigeria is glued together under a powerful central government of a type more suitable to a country with contiguous ethnicity. Nigeria is quite simply too large, too diverse, and too fractious a country to have an all powerful central government of the type it has today. Across Nigeria, there are groups agitating for greater devolvement of federal power to the regions. Although the mantra of these groups is "restructuring" of the Nigerian federation - what they really intend is what Ojukwu wanted to achieve at the Aburi conference in 1967: a constitutional arrangement that would devolve so much power to the regions that the entity known as Nigeria would exist in name only.

My Sincere advise to my fellow countrymen is that rather than engaging in another constitutional drafting/conference exercise at which will waste more taxpayers' money, and serve as a means for corrupt "big men" to get even richer, Nigeria would do well to dip into its archives and review the transcript of the debate at Aburi which is gathering dust in the national archives. The debate transcript is sufficiently detailed to serve as a constitution in waiting. To learn from the debates and mistakes of the past may ensure a better future for Nigeria.

ADIM Ekene Ugochukwu.

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