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Sunday, December 12, 1999
[This is an update of: TUESDAY THOTS: How An SNC Might Be Organized, December 7, 1999]
Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.
Most people would not mind rapture into heaven, yes, but painful death, no. Similarly, every Nigerian wants re-structuring, but some are saying it must not be via a Sovereign National Conference.
Can you make omelette without breaking eggs? Who is afraid of an SNC?
The other day, the University Lecturers Union in Nigeria (ASUU) concluded negotiations with the government, and eventually reached an agreement which was binding on all parties. They also held meetings with members of the National Assembly.
If a section of the Nigerian population -university lecturers - can have a meeting with the Executive and the Legislature, why cannot the rest of Nigerians TOGETHER form a union to have a meeting with the Executive and the Legislature and call that a (Sovereign) National Conference?
That is what the National Conference will be - it could in a sense be considered a union of all other Nigerians negotiating/conversing with the Execo and the Legislature!
Where there is a will, there is a way. There is a VERY SIMPLE way of convening a Sovereign National Conference that will be AGREEABLE to EVERYBODY. Let me outline some thoughts:
This is a main fear of these entities - erosion of their "constitutional rights and duties", a fear that they will be sidelined. Thus, the National and State Executives will be allowed to carry on their normal duties, and the National Assembly, working with the State Assemblies, will carry on with their usual legislative agenda, including coming up with their version of a revised Constitution as they are currently doing in committee.
There need not be an atmosphere of hysteria, just normal people discussing their country, but in a structured manner. Decisions will waft up from local to state to regional and then national level, refereed not by government but by representatives of civic organizations.
Retired judges, religious leaders, even some traditional rulers, might act as referees at various levels. For example, the NBA (despite their present opposition), the Inter-Faith Religious Council (IFRC), the Civil Liberties Organization (CLO), and the Transition Monitoring Group (TMG) could be the convoking organs.
It need not be paid for by the government, but that should not be ruled out. The convocation should not be done in an atmosphere of mass national hysteria. It is conceivable that a final body of about 4,000 Nigerians at a Final Summit of the Sovereign National Conference of Nigerians will meet in Abuja to vote on its own document, while the National Assembly will also have completed work on its own document.
Thus, to put more structure to this, we might have parallel sub-conferences occurring for a while as follows:
SET 1 CONFERENCE OF THE MASSES Each assemblage should be allowed to choose its own representatives at a certain level in ANY MANNER it deems fit. Some will do so by election.
Some by acclamation.
Whatever be the case, at each level up, there should be the same number, to be brought to a caucus to debate one aspect or the other of the Constitution AT THE NEXT LEVEL within a time certain. Any assemblage is free to decline participation.
SET 2: CONFERENCE OF CIVIL SOCIETY Finally, how is the REALITY of Nigeria to be factored in? How do people
live? By ethnic nationalities:
SET 3: CONFERENCE OF ETHNIC NATIONALITIES Of course we also have:
SET 4: THE NATIONAL AND STATE ASSEMBLIES Again, each group within each set can decide how it determines its representatives [Set 4 is already determined]. THEY NEED NOT ALL DO IT THE SAME WAY, and the Independent National Electoral Commission need not be involved at this stage - just the refereeing by the NBA, CLO, TMG and IFRC. However, in the National Referendum, the INEC should be involved.
[Sigh!]
If any particular set of people feel that their particular constituency is already adequately represented by the National and State Assemblies, then let then skip their own forum. I strongly believe that Set 2 and Set 3 are VERY ESSENTIAL.
It is Set 3 - the Conference of Ethnic Nationalities -that people are most suspicious about, but that need not be since all activities would/should have been set within a Constitutional Framework that does not threaten the national integrity.
Who pays for this obviously monumental task? The government can help out, or the TMG/CLO/NBA/IFRC can ask for donations both nationally and internationally. But the government should be a sport and help out some.
Whatever is agreed on by both in this Subcommitte will not be in the referendum, only points of disagreement. [However, one may choose to put ALL issues to vote in a referendum, in order to assess level of support or lack of it for ALL issues.] Anything accepted by the referedum goes into the new constitution. Anything rejected means that we revert to that section of the old constitution. Simple.
There will no "rush-rush". The Sovereign National Conference can take six months, nine months, no longer than one year from start to finish. It took the nation just from July 20, 1998 to May 29, 1999 to put in Obasanjo and all those others in the National and State Assemblies. It should not even take all of 10 months to wrap up an SNC if we put our minds to it.
Quite frankly, under constitutional freedom of association, it can done without their agreement, and the document agreed to be held in abeyance until the National Assembly are ready to bite. If President Obasanjo wishes, he HIMSELF can convoke a National Conference without reference to the National Assembly, a national conversation similar to what President Clinton has done in terms of race relations in this country.
If he, Obasanjo, can call a meeting of all Nigerian teachers without NA approval, then he can call a joint meeting of all mechanics and religious people. It follows that he a joint meeting of teachers, religious people and mechanics. It follows simply, therefore, that he can call a National Conference.
It may not be SOVEREIGN - that could come in time - but he can call an NC, and then by negotiation or by expediency, we can add an S in front of it, later on. This is not DIFFICULT for one to imagine at all, and there should be no mental block about it. In fact, I believe that sooner or later, Obasanjo will have to do this, if the SNC is not agreed quickly enough by the various assemblies.
I don't see what the problem is with this six-step outline. Do you? The Federal and State Executives do no lose power, the National Assembly and State Assemblies do not lose power, and the people participate truly massively in the process, the SOVEREIGNTY OF THE PEOPLE is guaranted, through discussions and through a vote. What could be better?
Now, there have been strident statements made that there will/should NEVER be a Sovereign National Conference, first, because the people calling for an SNC are tainted with an ulterior motive and secondly because the National Assembly is there to do ALL the job, and they represent the people, don't they?
Let us discuss the issue of hidden agenda, which reverts us to the issue of mutual ethnic suspicion that afflicts our country: some think the SNC thing has been "tainted" by folks and organizations with ulterior motives, that there is a separatist agenda, particularly due to some violent actions.
Those who support the SNC believe that its opponents are folks and organizations with ulterior motives, that they want to maintain a status quo from which they gain unfairly. Who then is to decide whose motives are tainted and whose are not? Is that not one of the reasons of the Conference - to settle this "motives" question?
Of course we also remember that during the Abacha days, those who asked for realization of June 12 were called "tainted" - ethnicists who wanted a Yoruba president or a president who is Yoruba? One wonders what president Obasanjo is.
Those who asked for the installation of Abiola after Abacha died were called "tainted". Those who called for a postponement of the presidential hand-over for two years during which an SNC would be convoked were called "tainted." This "tainted" business is tired, and should have been dead and buried with Abacha.
Secondly, while Constitutional Review is very important, the State and National Assemblies have much WIDER mandates to the people IN THE INTERIM - in terms of legislating for housing, food, shelter, education, etc. -than bogging themselves down in constitutional review which, due to the process, may in the future again get tangled up in wrangling. Besides, many of the Assembly members THEMSELVES know that they did not get one-tenth of the votes reported against their names.
For example, neither Obasanjo or Falae REALLY believes that each got 16 million and 11 million presidential election votes, do they? Their representativeness itself is therefore suspect, not to talk of the historically unfair regional skewedness of the Federal House seats distribution. So let us leave the ridiculous for the sublime in terms.
Finally, history tells us that the political graveyard is full of corpses of people who said "NEVER" to a political idea whose time has come, and lived either to see it in their life-time, or to have their children or grand-children see it. Rhodesia and South Africa are points in question, even Israel and Palestine, Northern Ireland, and finally the USSR.
It is quite possible that the SNC will not happen in Nigeria any time soon, in our life-times, but it sure WILL happen when the marginal cost of NOT convoking it exceeds the marginal cost of convoking it.
The question is: do we have the time to wait for that type of social accounting? Will we unravel as a nation before that time?
Those are the questions that inquiring minds want to know, but it would be a millenial gift to Nigeria if an SNC were convoked January 1, 2000, or soon thereafter!
Have a Blessed Sunday, but in the time being, enjoy these Soyinka and Vanguard comments on the same subject of (S)NC.
TELL, December 13, 1999, page 17 Professor Wole Soyinka, the Nobel laureate for literature, speaks on the escalating violence in parts of Nigeria. Excerpts:
For the moment, violence is still part of human nature and sometimes the circumstances tend to make other reports available to people. What we are witnessing today is simply not rationalisable, whether we are talking of Bayelsa, or we are talking of OPC, whether we are talking of violence of state or we are talking about what might be the equivalent of black on black violence in South Africa (when blacks) which simply pitched themselves on one another with a kind of ferocity that they do not even unleash on their common enemy. I have to make it clear to the contending parties to please go back and allow the possibilities of a genunine dialogue to begin. I continue to insist that part of the cause of this frustration is the refusal of the present government to put in motion the machinery of a national conference. We try to do our own bit, we have done partial conference of ethnic nationalities in Lagos. We had this conference on federalism to which President Olusegun Obasanjo sent a representative in the person of Jerry Gana. We had a confernce also on the 1999 Constitution which I also roundly condemned (THE CONSTITUTION, THAT IS). If you don't want to call it sovereign, leave out the word 'sovereign' but there has to be a national confab. There has to be a forum in which the various group interests in this nation come together, including nationalities, no matter what the structure is - talk of labour union, student union, market women, chamber of commerce, even the military, should have representatives at this time. If the people believe that they have a platform on which to air their views, as equal partners in the process, they are less likely to be cross-offended into blind, mindless violence. What we are witnessing today is a foretaste of the kind of atrocities which may make the mind buggle (sic) at the situation in Sierra Leone. We are having rape. We're having mutilation. We're having slaughter of children, the disembowling of women, rape - left, right and centre. The desecration of our womanhood, the defilement of the values which can condemn every component of the society. We have to call a stop somewhere here. This is the appeal to the various organisations whether it is the Egbesu, or the OPC. When they go back, they try and let their heads rule their muscles, just for a period of time. And during that thaw, allow the various leaders to meet and invite youths, in other words, you can have mini-forums, building up towards a national forum; there are many ways of going about it. His Imperial Majesty, Senator Okadigbo http://www.afbis.com/vanguard/VC20712.htm
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