by Dr. Wumi Akintide, Contributor – Ayo Dada
The situation Nigeria has found herself today was avoidable if our past leaders have had the guts to do the needful, which was to go back to regional government that we had before the military centralized the country.
The 2014 National Conference was inaugurated by the former Nigerian President Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan on 17 March 2014 in Abuja, Nigeria. There were about 492 delegates that represented a cross-section of Nigerians including the professional bodies group. The Conference was headed by retired Chief Justice Idris Legbo Kutigi . Following a plenary session that lasted for weeks, the Conference was broken into 20 committees that included Public Finance and Revenue among others. Mr Johnson Oludeinde Oluata FCNA is among the delegates, he represents Association of National Accountants of Nigeria (ANAN) in the professional bodies group. Meanwhile, all 20 committees have submitted their reports to be deliberated upon at the next plenary session.
Principal Officers Chairman, Justice Idris Kutigi (rtd), Vice Chairman Prof. Bolaji Akinyemi, Secretary Dr Valerie Azinge.
Main Committees: Devolution of Power Committee, Political Restructuring and Forms of Government National Security; Environment; Politics and Governance; Law, Judiciary, Human Rights and Legal Reform. Social Welfare; Transportation; Agriculture; Society, Labour and Sports; Public Service; Electoral Matters, Foreign Policy and Diaspora Matters, Land Tenure Matters and National Boundary. Trade and Investment Committee, Energy; Religion; Public Finance and Revenue Generation, Science, Technology and Development Immigration
I blame Goodluck Jonathan for keeping the 2014 Confab report in the Cooler but I apologize to him at the same time.
Holding the Confab was a big push from his constituents in the South with some tacit approval from the Fulani power brokers in the North who preferred the status quo to any peaceful change in Nigeria to keep the country one.
Young JFK was thinking about thE Fulanis when he said that “Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable”.
I blame Goodluck Jonathan for lacking the spine and the back bone to say in 2014 what he is now saying years after the report had been submitted to him and his Government. (The former President who stated this on Thursday January 21, 2021, in Abuja at the 18th Daily Trust Dialogue which focused on restructuring also noted that mutual suspicion, absence of trust, and lack of patriotism were fundamental issues that needed to be addressed to make the nation greater. Dr. Jonathan charged leaders at different levels to “encourage a healthy conversation on restructuring and reforms that stir national pride and love and faith of our citizens in our beloved country.” He stated further that the call for restructuring would make better meaning if Nigerians prioritised “love of country, national unity, unifying leadership and building of strong institutions and values.”)
If he had issued a white paper on the report in 2014, the APC and Buhari would not have won the Election in 2015.
Jonathan had chickened out of the implementation because he lacked the good judgment and the political courage.
He was intimidated by the Fulani power brokers in his Government who did not want a return to regional autonomy which was what the Report was all about and the solution to the problems of Nigeria as brilliantly articulated by Chief Oluyemi Falae the Leader of the Yoruba Delegation to the Confab held in Abuja.
Chief Falae was correct to say that there can be no Nigeria without the implementation of the Confab Report.
Muhammadu Buhari’s decision to to implement the so called administrative restructuring for the country’s better governance was in bad taste and could not have received the blessing of the South, and realizing this reneged on the promise. This Buhari did when he realized that his decoy and a trap to enslave the South in perpetuity by his administrative restructuring plan implementation was not going to work.
A return to regional autonomy as enshrined in the 1959 Nigerian Constitution is the most effective answer to the Nigerian Problem. Anything else is an aberration that is not going to work. I hundred percent support the Falae logic and hypothesis.
I apologize to Goodluck Jonathan for believing that his Government was worse than that of Buhari whose ultimate agenda is to continue the status quo in Nigeria and to let the Fulanis infilftrate the South and to eventually islamize the South, to take it over to actualize the Dream of Uthman Dan Fodio.
President Olusegun Obasanjo, a General in the Army who speaks Hausa fluently and was the longest-serving Head of State of Nigeria had the opportunity to restructure Nigeria but he too chickened out of it because he too was too much of a narcissist who want to bell the cat like that and to “save Nigeria from falling apart”.
I really don’t want Nigeria to break up but I would gladly support the break-up if Buhari and his Government refuse to meet the South half way by returning Nigeria back to regional autonomy where each Geo-political zone can proceed and progress at its own pace, and where the regions would be far stronger than the central Government in Abuja.
I rest my case.
- El-Rufai Seeks Opposition Alliance, Invites Atiku, Obi, Others to Join SDP
- Obasanjo accuses Buhari of enabling corruption with state pardons
- Kano emirship tussle: Appeal Court halts Sanusi’s reinstatement
- Police Warn El-Rufai over Malicious Allegations against Security Agencies
- US says South African ambassador ‘no longer welcome’
