Column
–
| By Dan Agbese |
AND so they gather dust. And bury some of the most informed views collectively offered by Nigerians for a greater Nigeria. And because they gather dust, there are no dramatic or focused changes in how we carry on the business of transforming this cluster of natives in a mere geographic expression into a nation with firm feet on the plinth of unquestionable nationhood. They gather dust – and Nigeria and the Nigerians are enveloped in the darkness of untruth and stuck in the miasma of pure malfeasance. Take a breath.
Our country has had a good record of looking its problems in the face and showing evidence of its ambition to relieve itself of those things that hobble its forward movement. But it has had an incredibly poor record of pulling back, of fearing to apply those lessons that would distance it from its mistakes of today in order to propel it to a brighter future and become a nation, in the immortal words of our national anthem, in which no man is oppressed or criminally denied his rights and the privileges of citizenship by reason of his tribe, religion or the place of his birth.
I know of no nation that tries so hard to be a great nation but brings out the worst in its people – a disconnect between the rulers and the ruled; naked theft of public fund by those to whom it is entrusted by law; corruption in high and low places; and the elevation of criminals into positions of power: they decide if we can sleep with our two eyes closed.
This is not a sermon on Zuma rock. It is my reflections on what our nation could have made of itself by now were this nation and its people true and sincere to themselves. In the last few days, I have reflected on three of the most recent attempts to change the architecture of our national development. I refer to a) the report and the recommendations of the political reform conference convened by the President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2006; b) the report and the recommendations of the electoral reform committee set up by the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua in 2008 and c) the report and the recommendations of the national political conference convened at great national expense by President Goodluck Jonathan in 2013. Each was an attempt to put things right. None came close to achieving that noble purpose.
I had my reservations about Obasanjo and Jonathan’s conferences but I am willing to admit that none of them was an idle or wasteful indulgence by them. Obasanjo, Yar’Adua and Jonathan acted in response to the quest by the nation to right its wrongs, including the act of omission and commission in the amalgamation of 1914, and set it on the path of a great nation in which fairness, equity, justice and I dare say, the strict observance of the rule of law, are the solemn articles of faith and not occasional sloganeering by those who are privileged to walk the corridors of power.
Yar’Adua’s electoral reform committee stands out as something unique in our quest for free, fair and credible elections. The late president became, as far as I can tell, the first man in history to express dissatisfaction with the conduct of the election that brought him to power. He came close to repudiating the results but pulled back from denying himself the fruits thereof. Power sweet.
Yar’Adua surprised the nation and, certainly, the rest of the world, when he made it clear in his inaugural speech on May 29, 2007, that he would reform the electoral system in such a way that the conduct of elections at all levels in the country would enjoy best practices and our elections would be respected by the local and the international communities. He was as good as his word. He set up the electoral reform committee chaired by the former Chief Justice of Nigeria, the very suave Mr Justice Mohammed Uwais. The committee, trust Uwais, did its work and submitted its report and recommendations to Yar’Adua. Sadly, death robbed of us what Yar’Adua would have done with the report. And our unreformed electoral system blows in the wind, making it possible for Elder Orubebe to attempt to scuttle the 2015 presidential election in full view of shocked Nigerians and election observers.
Yar’Adua’s vice-president, Dr Goodluck Jonathan, who succeeded him, felt no moral compulsion to study and implement the recommendations of the committee. One would expect him to have been a party to the committee and, therefore, obliged by the morality of partnership not to ignore the report. But continuity is anathema in the politics of our country. Sadly. Jonathan must have reasoned that since he did not set up the committee, its reports and recommendations were not his concern. He abandoned it on the shelf. And it gathers dust.
His attitude has robbed the country of a good chance to reform its electoral system. Anyone who is interested in knowing why we are stuck in motion in defiance of the law of movement and progress need not look beyond the cynical detachment of successive administrations from the moral imperatives of continuity, the soul of national progress.
Obasanjo convened his political reform conference with bells and whistles. He even did it in breach of the constitution. The legislature did not appropriate fund for it. Still, the sons and the daughters of the soil gathered and jawed jawed in the sincere hope that the conference represented as good a chance as any for us to come up with ideas that would reshape the nation.
It has been said, and I have no reasons to dispute it, that the convener of the conference had ulterior motives. He sent his acolytes into the conference to force a constitutional amendment to give him a third term in office. Still, the conference produced a report and recommendations it believed would move the nation forward. But the third term agenda having been defeated, Obasanjo lost interest in it. He sent the report to the national assembly. What did he expect the senate to do with it? The senate dumped it. And there, it gathers dust. Such wasteful exercises at great public expense have verily made their mark on governance. Think of a nation hobbled by insincerity and duplicity.
When the agitation for another national conference, sovereign or otherwise, began again late 2012, Jonathan stoutly opposed it. He said he did not believe in it and was not prepared to convene it. However, when it dawned on him that he could use the conference for possible political gains in the 2015 presidential election, he agreed to convene it. For three months, over 400 Nigerians – experienced and not so experienced – gathered in Abuja to hammer out their collective views about the future of our country and what we needed to make Nigeria our country.
Members of the conference believe they found the formula in every instance of our seemingly intractable problems. But what did Jonathan, its reluctant but converted convener, do with the report and the recommendations? Nothing. I am sure he did not even bother to study the executive summary. He sent them to the senate. And with that, he believed he had fully discharged his responsibility to the nation, apropos the waste of huge public funds. And there the report and its recommendations gather dust. Whatever brilliant recommendations the conference made have since died on arrival.
I have heard calls on President Muhammadu Buhari to rescue the recommendations of the Jonathan conference. I fear that the chances of that happening are as good as hell freezing over. In which case those who fall short of the glory of God on the day of judgement would have to contend with extreme cold, not extreme heat.
There is a sense in which it is patently unfair to place the responsibility on the laps of Buhari. He was not a party to what motivated Jonathan to convene the conference. It was not his call. It was Jonathan’s call. But the president loses nothing should he feel persuaded that there is something in the report of the conference that points the country in the right direction. Change, the gospel of his political party, should also mean a government that does things differently in a more extended vision of the progress and development of our country.
I have repeatedly asked myself this question: If the recommendations of the two conferences and those of the electoral reform committee were implemented, would they have changed Nigeria? It is a weighty question. I do not pretend to have the answer. However, I am old enough to know and appreciate this elementary fact: world history has no instances of nations, great or small, that were built when some of the answers to its problems gather dust on government and legislative shelves. Ours would not prove an exception to this basic fact of national development.
I went on my knees last night to call hot holy ghost fire down on anyone or a group of persons that might nurse the unholy thought of persuading or convincing Buhari to follow the hollow beaten path and call the natives to gather once more in search of the magic formula for our national development.
— Nov 9, 2015 @ 12:30 GMT
|
Tags:
