by Demola Rewaju

Opposing something you believe in simply because it is coming from someone you don’t like shows an endless abyss of hypocrisy that deepens each time we think we’ve seen the worst from them and here, I am referring to the Bola Tinubu camp and their strange bedfellows in APC.

The nomenclature hardly matters – national conference, dialogue, discussion, confab, meeting or whatever they call it – I believe it is a distraction and the response of a people who have no clear-cut agenda to the problems besetting our country.

First, we must make a distinction between those of us who have chosen a stand on the matter based on our principles and values and those who are fair-weather ideologues whose opposition to it is based on where the idea comes from. Uncle Bola Ige told us that Awo told them to acknowledge a good thing even if it was being done by their adversary. Opposing something you believe in simply because it is coming from someone you don’t like shows an endless abyss of hypocrisy that deepens each time we think we’ve seen the worst from them and here, I am referring to the Bola Tinubu camp and their strange bedfellows in APC.

Here is a party, camp and section of the country who have always said that the solution to the problems of Nigeria is a national dialogue aka Sovereign National Conference but have now done a backflip simply because they are not the planners of the idea and perhaps were not consulted. This act is condemnable and shows that if President Goodluck Jonathan says ‘ money is good’ they would immediately start tearing up their stolen naira and dollars just to prove otherwise.

My stand on the issue of a conference under whatever guise and regardless of who organises it was first made public about two and a half years ago via this Daily Times website where I was temporarily a regular writer at the time. It was a popular idea of the period and so I took much flak for my stand but unfortunately, my perspective on the issue is guided not only by history but by national socio-political concerns which I would discuss briefly again.

The history of the Sovereign National Conference started under the reign of General Sani Abacha and it was championed initially by the Afenifere group. It also had a twin that is dead and forgotten now – Government of National Unity. The idea on the surface seemed good, Uncle Bola explained that the conference would resolve two major issues: 1, whether the peoples of Nigeria were willing to go on as one nation and 2, on what terms they were willing to go on as one nation. That was the promo line; the real agenda was to gather a group of politicians under the banner of sovereignty, declare Abacha’s government illegal and pronounce Abiola president in line with the Epetedo declaration.

Those who kept on talking about the national conference after the commencement of democracy are those who had no idea what the conference was about but liked the various talking points of the whole thing such as this one by Senator Abraham Adesanya: ‘we have to choose to jaw-jaw not war-war’.

Are the questions of nationhood resolved and thus a conference to address it no longer necessary? Not exactly, but a conference cannot resolve the question of nationhood. It is my purest belief that tribalism only comes up when some member of the ruling elite feels oppressed by the rest and he resorts to archetypal thinking: ‘they’re marginalising me because I’m Yoruba’ or when some footballer is trying to get into the football team although he’s not good enough: ‘Keshi is only picking Igbo and South-South people’. At the base levels of society, our people are united by mutual hardship regardless of tribe – hunger, accidents, Boko Haram bombs and other things like that don’t differentiate between Hausa, Igbo or Middle-Belt victims.

A national conference at best is just another avenue to allow some old men and women who are part of a wasted generation to continue bringing up archaic solutions to issues. If government declares that 70% of the delegates at the conference must be below 30, then I can lend my support to the idea. I am above 30 already so I’m not reacting for myself but I believe questions of nationhood should be discussed by people who are truly the youths of our time not a fading generation. Besides, what modus operandi will be used to select the delegates? How many unions will send their representatives? If the conference is not sovereign, what gives its resolutions the force of law? If they would still resort to the national assembly why not simply start from the national assembly?

The bitter truth here is that this is just another talkshop that would lead nowhere and democrats like myself are not distracted either by government or the pseudo-oppositional Tinubu crowd. Our best bet is to deepen democracy: make the national assembly responsive by putting pressure on the members from the lowest levels of society. Rather than focusing on the president for criticism, let everyone find out who his senator and house of representative member is as well as their constituency office or Abuja address and send him one letter every week even if it is just to complain about your inability to impregnate a woman or be impregnated by a man. That is the democratic culture of responsiveness that we need to evolve. At the very least, it would strengthen the lawmaking body by making them realise that some of us are paying attention to them as individuals and holding them responsible as such rather than their hiding under the banner of collective responsibility to perpetrate collective stupidity.

This National Conference idea is at best an archaic response to modern problem and will create more problems for this country than solve anything. It was a needless distraction during President Obasanjo’s tenure and it cannot but be the same now. If people desperately need to talk, let them do so without involving government or let those who must agitate about something go and look for the PRONACO document that Chief Anthony Enahoro left behind.

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