Jonathan's confab meant to placate SNC agitators - Shehu Sani

Kaduna based human civil rights campaigner and President of the Civil Rights Congress (CRC), Mallan Shehu Sani said on Friday that the national dialogue proposed by President Goodluck Jonathan is only aimed at placating agitators of a Sovereign National Conference and not to address the nation's teething problems.

Sani said in a statement in Kaduna that the proposed national dialogue is doomed to fail from the beginning as it will only provide an opportunity for northerners and southerners to engage in prolonged session of overheated sectionalist debate and give the government a respite to strategise for the 2015 elections.

While describing the proposed dialogue as a charade, Sani said 'the national conference idea of the President Jonathan's government is nothing but a fraudulent exercise mischievously conceived to rubbish and bastardize the genuine idea of a sovereign National Conference as propagated by other progressive Nigerians over the Years.

He said, 'President Goodluck Jonathan's conference is a journey to eldorado as it will neither take us out of the hell of our national woes nor deliver us to the paradise of our dreams. It is primarily aimed at appeasing the advocates of the conference and not achieving its ideal purpose.

'President Goodluck Jonathan conference is a deceptive exercise aimed at diverting the attention of the nation away from the prevalent moral crisis and failure of governance, by engaging the nation in a meaningless and endless debate about a wishful future.

'The National conference of president Jonathan will only engage northerners and southerners in a prolong session of overheated sectionalists and chauvinists debate while given the regime a respite to strategise for the 2015 elections.

'The economy has collapsed, the universities remain shut, residents doctors are threatening to down tools, states are bankrupt, Nigerians are killed and kidnapped, oil is stolen, corruption is at its highest level, these are the issues President Jonathan's conference is aimed at diverting.

'Those who think that the oppressed can be free through a dialogue process organized by the oppressor and on its own terms, lives in a fool's paradise; Nowhere in history and nowhere in the world has the oppressors willingly sits down with the oppressed, on same table and surrender their class privileges and structures of power and plunder without a bitter revolutionary struggle.'