By Cosmas Omegoh
The gradual surge in the demand for a revisit to the 2014 National Conference and subsequent implementation of its provisions is gathering momentum.
The latest is the Ohanaeze Ndigbo chieftain, Chief Goddy Uwazuruike, a legal luminary, who has added his voice to those calling on President Bola Tinubu to fast-track efforts at saving Nigeria by implementing the decisions reached at that conference.
In this encounter with Sunday Sun, Chief Uwazuruike said that doing so would put Nigeria on a new trajectory. Excerpt:
There is a resurgence of calls for the last National Conference to be revisited and its provisions implemented. Are you a part of this push?
Yes, I join the rest of Nigerians calling for revisiting of the 2014 National Conference that was conveyed by former President Goodluck Jonathan in Abuja. To start with, that report was in ten volumes. It considered virtually every aspect of the Nigerian question. There were a total of 495 delegates from all walks of life, most of them were very eminent persons. We sat down both at the plenary and the committee levels and worked out a lot of things. Unfortunately, Jonathan who had already accepted the report for implementation was voted out. The man who succeeded him, former President Muhammadu Buhari arrogantly said: ‘I have not seen the report, I have not looked at it and I will not look at it. It should belong to the archives.’ By that submission, he clearly showed himself as a man who knows next to nothing. Those who are in power now, yes, I agree that they are more informed than those who were there before, should begin to look at that report now. It has solutions to Nigeria’s current problems; they should not look the other way.
Buhari had all the opportunities in the whole world to consider that report; it could have helped to bring down the spiraling exchange rate his regime witnessed. Here is an example. A former Accountant General and a head Committee of former Finance Ministers and Commissioners, when they were submitting their report on why the dollar kept spiraling, said it was because the moment state governments got their federal allocations from Abuja, the next day, the officials went straight to the black market to change a huge part of the money to dollars. That alone heaped enormous pressure on the dollar exchange rate. Immediately, we heard that we screamed. That information provided a clue to tackling the exchange rate. It was simple common sense. Another committee on Industrial Financing told us that banks were not giving loans to factories and industries anymore. They were only giving to importers and state governments. That state governments, before half of the month, used to spend entirely their allocations. Next, they headed straight for the commercial banks to borrow. The banks were happy because they knew that in the next two weeks, their money would come in from federal allocation. I’m sure all that is still happening now. These are some of the revelations made at the conference. They are common sense the government of the day didn’t listen to. So, I expect the present government to revisit those things now. Those in power know what to do. That is why they are in power. But if the government of the day does not know what to do, then the managers can go ahead and behave like Buhari who said the report was in the archives and kept moving in the wrong direction. So, I join the call for the current government to return to those conference’s resolutions.
You were a prominent member of that conference, can you recall some of the germane resolutions made?
One of the many issues we resolved is that the states can have state police; another is that states can collapse into one another because many of them are not viable and cannot sustain themselves. The conference resolved that the size of the legislature should be reduced, and that the size of the government must be reduced. In other words, the cost of governance must be reduced. That is a part of restructuring we have been talking about. For instance, why would the Ministry of Water Resources be drilling borehole in my community when we have local and state governments that ought to be doing so. We discussed other things including education, and why so many young people are coming out of school without jobs. Of course, then we didn’t have this japa syndrome. It was under Buhari that we started seeing japa; it was under the same Buhari’s watch as military head of state that we had ‘Andrew don’t check out.’ We took time to look at the health situation in Nigeria. We considered how to make sure that our doctors who were trained with public funds actually offered service. We looked at road networks and said yes, farmers can produce food, but if there is no access road to move their produce out, their effort is a complete waste of time. We looked at security and the crisis in the North then between the marauders who are mainly Fulani and the settled people and the minorities who are mainly being killed. We came to the conclusion that it was all about land-grabbing. What should the government do? We made our suggestions in our report. But at the end of the day, the people who did not want to see evil and hear evil came to power. They had no alternative ideas to steer the country in the right direction. That conference too, took care of INEC crisis. At that time, the current INEC chairman was an assistant secretary at the National Conference. We made a resolution that an independent-minded person should be appointed as INEC chairman. And we asked ourselves ‘how do we get him?’ We touched on how to get our judges appointed. We considered how the National Judicial Council can draw the lines. We made our suggestions. We had a meeting with the then Chief Justice of Nigeria; he gave us his own recommendations on how to improve the Judiciary. Everything is there. If the government had implemented that, what happened to Justice Walter Ononngen could not have happened. We talked about having a federal judiciary instead of a judiciary that is only in name. We looked at the security of judges and why state judges were suffering in the hands of state governors. We considered state governments taking over federal roads and what happens. We looked at employment, whether labour should be a federal matter or a state matter, because the man who lives in Maiduguri and the one who lives in Lagos cannot be earning the same amount, the cost of living in Maiduguri will always be lower. We took care of the needs of teachers too. This issue of cattle ranchers took lots of our time. I remember one delegate from Kano saying any place they went to, they must be given land. We countered him and said: ‘If we come to Kano to set up a farm, would you give us land and he said never. And we said it is the same way we cannot give you land anywhere you go. At the end of the day the resolution was that if you want to set up a business anywhere, go and buy land, buy land and do what the law requires to owe the land. We considered this issue of Northeast and Southeast commissions; the latter they are tackling now. We reasoned that during the civil war, the infrastructure in the Southeast and South-south regions were damaged and up till now, much of them have not been repaired. We said fine, a commission will take care of that including what was damaged by Boko Haram. Then the latter was rejected by some delegates from the North. Then I remember the Sarduana Katsina saying ‘okay oo, it is like people are voting according to their tribes forgetting that they are here for the whole country. Now, let the matter go to the National Assembly.’ David Mark who was then the Senate President received the report unfortunately, but could not present it to the Senate. For me, we had a solution to our problems. I reason that it is senseless to look the other way when we have the solutions here with us.
Now, could you refresh our minds regarding the terms of reference you were given; were you handed boundaries you must not exceed at the conference?
Yes, of course, we were given boundaries; the government made it clear that we should not talk about the dismemberment of Nigeria. The government made it clear that the unity of Nigerian is not negotiable. Every other thing was okay, including the tenure of office of the president. And then, of course, some people said ‘ah, Jonathan wanted to hand himself an automatic second third term in office.’ And, of course, the APC used it as a campaign propaganda, just like they did when the man was building schools for the nomads. He built schools, but as soon as he left, those schools were taken over by cattle ranchers who kept their cattle there by night.
Under what atmosphere did you engage at the conference? Were the sessions in any way rancorous?
There was no intimidation of any sort. The business of the day during the meetings was conducted under a great atmosphere of understanding and conviviality. On the first meeting day, we had introduction. On the second day, we told ourselves why we were there. Everybody had a chance to speak. I was a delegate of Ohanaeze Ndigbo. Everybody who was there had a chance to speak on their expectations. By the time we were done with that, we broke into committees. That was how we operated. And when we were taking decisions, it was by consensus. Not one of them was by voting. There was no rancour. The only rancour that arose was when we considered the issue of setting up a commission. That we eventually left for the government of the day to handle. In all, everyone was free at the conference. I remember the chairman, the late Justice Idris Kutigi. One day, some delegates from the North led by a particular senator rushed to him and lied that the Deputy Chairman, Prof Bolaji Akinyemi was intimidating them. When they wanted to go further, Kutigi said, ‘wait a minute. It better we call Prof Akinyemi to be present. You cannot level accusations against a man in his absence.’ So, when Prof Akinyemi arrived, he said, ‘can I speak at the plenary?’ Of course, at the plenary, I was the one who got up and said Prof, please don’t speak; we took the issues one after the other and he never spoke. Most of us stood up on that occasion and dealt with the issue. Prof was vindicated. I remember our consideration of the constitution; I was the one who moved for that. I also moved a motion that zones should have equal number of states and that was adopted. So, for me, it was something we all looked forward to. However, the chairman, may God rest his soul, warned us that there was a serious lobby to make sure our report did not see the light of the day. Now, has that come to pass? My take on that is simple and direct – once the report has been accepted by the government, it remains there. One day, one government will come to power and look into it. It is just like the Uwais report. It was once adopted; it remained there. We adopted the Orosanya report on tenure for directors. But once Buhari came to power, he cancelled it and said one can be a director for 12 years, rather than the eight years that the Orosanya report recommended. Now, we expect President Tinubu to look into all of these; he has intelligent men all around him to do so. He may not have to accept everything 100 per cent. He can pick and choose.
Is it possible, looking at the cost and other circumstances, to convene another conference to look at the National Conference report all over again?
What I know is that the government can always set up a committee. Such committee can be honest or dishonest. I don’t expect Tinubu to sit down and begin to read the entire document. He can always send the document to the National Assembly so that they can debate the report. There are some issues there that he might not need to send to the National Assembly because they are so simply. He can go ahead to implement them.
And so, what steps are required now to make some of those resolutions are operational?
We have some of them that require the National Assembly to look at. Now, I will say this with all sense of seriousness – a hard working National Assembly will have to read the report and adopt it because we had motions; and we had resolutions. Then, one of them will just get up and say, ‘I, Hon. so, so and so person, hereby move the motion that so, so, and so issue should be adopted, and that goes to his credit. We did a great home work. If the government is interested, it knows what to do. Some of those things can go to the National Assembly as executive bills. As for the steps for their implementation, the ones that affect the judiciary, the Chief Justice can go ahead and implement them because they don’t affect the constitution. They are mere rules of practice. Now, the one that are strictly for the executive do not need to go to the National Assembly. All the president needs to do is to direct the Head of Service to that effect, issue a statement and implementation starts. The ones that are fundamental are those that affect the constitution. They are the ones that need the attention of the National Assembly. What we did at that confab was advisory. What we did in three months was what no National Assembly has been able to do in four years. The day I respected the members was the day we were supposed to close at 5:00p.m. But we continued working, going through the constitution section by section. At 5:00p.m, a former party chairman got up and informed us that we had exceeded the time, that we should adjourn. The chairman asked if we could adjourn, but the members said no. We kept working till 8:00p.m. The members were determined even though we were subjected to all forms of propaganda bordering on the cost of feeding us. The opposition to the confab was determined to give us a bad name so as just to justify their aim. It was horrible!
How then did you collate the report of all the committees?
Each committee presented its own report to the whole house for discussion – every committee. I belonged to the Legal and Judiciary Committee alongside Femi Falana, Olisa Agbakoba, Mike Ozehhome and the rest. In our committee, we had a former Chief Judge of one of the northern states. He was in that position for 18 years. We had serving members of the judiciary; I remember one from the Court of Appeal; I remember one from the Federal High Court – men and women. The former Chief Judge even gave us a solution to this recurring herders- framers’ crisis. When we asked a member from Taraba State, he said some of those herders are funny. If they come to an area and stay there for one season, next they start claiming the land. We discussed clearly and openly on why we have those clashes, because clashes in the Northwest then were different from the ones in the Northeast. They had different origins. He took time to educate us. All these things are there. But unfortunately we had a government that saw no evil and heard no evil.
How much will the implementations of this report benefit Nigeria as it were?
When it comes to how much the implementation of our report will save Nigeria, I will say what is involved is unquantifiable – good governance. Good governance is unquantifiable. Everyone stands to benefit from it. Where there is good governance, you are sure to go to court and it will surely be the last hope of the common man. We know what to do, but unfortunately, we keep in blabbing; we keep on stumbling.
What I see inhibiting the implementation of that conference resolution is lack of political will – the will to effect fundamental changes in the way we do things. It is simple! While Buhari was there, he shunned restructuring. He looked the other way. Now, the bulk stops at the desk of President Tinubu. When he was in ACN, he was a champion of restructuring. But when Buhari came, they dumped restructuring. I expect Tinubu to go back, look at the constitution of APC and start restructuring the country soonest. This will not hurt anybody. Rather, we all are going to benefit from it. I trust we will!