Dan Agbese: One step forward

By Dan Agbese
Pundits would be tempted to judge the National Conference by its sticky end over derivation. Oh yes, again. That would be both fair and unfair. Yes, controversy over the same issue abruptly ended the National Political Reform Conference in 2005. Yes, it was not unreasonable to expect that the same issue would not drag this conference down. Even in politics, there is something called growing up. And yes, I can hear the unreconstructed cynics who warned all along that the only achievement of the conference would be to burn a hole in our national purse chant: “We told you so.”

But no, this controversy does not define the work of the conference. To start with, the conduct of the conference was a big surprise. There were no fire works and no walkouts. Meaning, there was greater maturity at this conference than at its predecessor in 2005. Yes, something worth crowing about in an atomistic nation of atomistic tribes in permanent conflict with one another.

It would be fair to admit that the way and manner the conference was convened raised issues and doubts about it as well as the intention of its convener. For starters, the convener was a sudden convert to a national dialogue, sovereign or non-sovereign. Sudden conversions are not in themselves bad. St Paul, the former Saul, was a sudden convert to the teachings of the Nazarene. He went on to found the Christian religion in the mighty name of Jesus. Still, the president's sudden conversion and the timing of the conference all led to only one conclusion: the man merely wanted to throw the bones at the dogs; while they nibble and fight over, he is free to oil his guns for his continued tenancy in Aso Rock.

Given the way the conference was conducted and the issues it addressed through its committees and agreed to in the plenary, I did not expect the conference to end on this rather sour note and once again throw up derivation as perhaps the gravest national problem facing us today. I think the decision of the conference to refer this and the proposal for a national intervention fund for the rehabilitation and reconstruction of areas devastated by the Boko Haram insurgency to the president was a cop out. The conference was better placed than its recommended technical committee to resolve these issues – one old, the other new.

Ohaneze is so far the only ethnic body to take issues with the intervention fund. It has promptly submitted a N2.6 trillion bill to the Nigerian nation for the rehabilitation and reconstruction of the five South-Eastern states and Anioma in Delta State. It argues that if there is merit in setting up an intervention fund for the rehabilitation and the reconstruction of the theatres of the Boko Haram insurgency, it is only fair to extend the same thing to the Igbo areas that were also theatres of the Nigerian civil war. Counting the chickens before they are hatched is not as foolish as you might think.

However the pundits would judge this conference, it would be fair to agree that by and large, it went further than the political reform conference in dealing with the burning issues that have become lice in the lock of our national progress. Some of its decisions, if they make it to amendments of our constitution, might not entirely lead to returning our country to a federation in name and in fact but they would help in freeing our country from this anomaly of a federal-unitary system.

I refer, in this regard, to two of its decisions that I find eminently sensible. One, state police. The conference punctured the silly argument that Nigeria is not ripe for a state police. It is. It has recommended that the states be allowed to set up, fund and maintain their respective police force. Attempting to police this vast conference with a 290,000 federal police force is an obvious joke. If state governors are the chief security officers of their states, then they should have the means to carry out this vital function.

Two, the conference agreed that the local governments should be the full responsibilities of the states. Nowhere in the world are local governments the responsibilities of central governments; not even in a unitary system of government. Several local government reforms by the generals left us with this anomalous federal structure with three tiers of government, all feeding from the national trough. The nation shoulders this burden at the expense of development.

In the present unhealthy structure, the local government councils replicate the structure of government at the centre and in the states. Each council is made up of an executive headed by the local government chairman and a vice-chairman with supervisory councillors. The council chairman chairs his executive council just like the president and the state governors. There is also a legislature, headed by the speaker assisted by a deputy speaker. What is missing in the local government set up is the judiciary and a chief judge. Oh yes, the wife of a local government chairman is the first lady of the local government area too. Don't laugh.

I welcome these and other progressive decisions intended to make us see our way through the dark maze of our bastardised federalism. But I am not in a rush to drink to the conference. It may, as it seems, submit a sensible report but that is how far it can go. The fate of its report lies in the hands of the convener of the conference. If, as it has been suspected all along, the president has a different agenda, then there is no prize for guessing where the report would be found by future historians.

So, let us pray: Father, rebabababa shekekeke. I declare that the report of this conference shall not gather dust. I declare that the N7 billion spent on it did not go down the drain. It went into the pockets of fellow Nigerians. Rekekeke shekekeke. I come against all principalities that would prevent the decisions of the conference from making it into constitutional amendments. I declare that the 18 states recommended by the conference shall be created. Shekekeke. Thank you father, for in the mighty name of Jesus I have prayed .