ONLY
RESTRUCTURING WILL ENSURE THE UNITY, PEACE AND DEVELOPMENT OF NIGERIA.
(Being Text of Press
Conference by Southern Leaders Forum (SLF) on August 23, 2017 @Lagos)
The Southern Leaders Forum (SLF) welcomes
President Muhammadu Buhari back to the country after 105 days medical vacation
in the United Kingdom. It is our fervent prayer that God Almighty will perfect
his health so he can effectively discharge the functions of his office as the
President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. We have studied the national broadcast by Mr
President on Monday 21August, 2017; and after a careful and thorough analysis
of the speech, we make the following observations.
1. The President expressed his disaffection
about comments on Nigeria while he was away that "question our collective
existence as a nation" and which he said have crossed the "red
lines". Against the background of the threat to treat "hate
speech" as "terrorism",we see a veiled threat to bare fangs and
commence the criminalization of dissenting opinions in our national discourse .
Experience worldwide has shown that any attempt to deal with dissent by force
usually drives it underground which makes it much more dangerous and difficult
to deal with .We should have learnt a lesson or two from Boko Haram which was
an open organization before the state drove it underground and we are still
under its reign of terror despite official claim that it has been
"technically defeated" or "degraded ". As elders who believe that it is better to
seek solutions to problems, we appeal that we must engage in social engineering
fully aware that globalization has made it very difficult to use repressive
tactics to suppress opinions.
2. Mr President deploys the imagery of the
late Chief Emeka Ojukwu to play down the demand for the renegotiation of the
structure of Nigeria by saying they both agreed in Daura in 2003 that we must
remain "one and united". While we agree with them, the meeting
between the two of them could not have been a Sovereign National Conference
whose decisions cannot be reviewed .The fact that we agree on their conclusion
that we should remain united does not foreclose discussions of the terms and
conditions of the Union. The claim that Nigeria's "unity is settled and
not negotiable" is untenable. Every country is a daily dialogue and there
is nothing finally settled in its life. Stable nations are still fine-tuning
details of the architecture of their existence now and then. How much more
Nigeria that has yet to attain nationhood? If we are a settled nation, we would
not be dealing with the many crises of nation building that are afflicting us
today which have made it extremely difficult to squarely and urgently face issues
of growth and development. The British negotiated to put the various ethnic
groups together .All the constitutional conferences held in the years before
independence were negotiations .When the North walked out of the parliament in
1953 after Chief Anthony Enahoro moved the motion for independence it took
negotiations to bring them back into the union after their eight-point agenda
which was mainly about confederation All the conferences held after
independence on constitutionalism are all forms of negotiations .There is no
peaceful co-existence that is not about negotiations in a plural society.
3.
The one sentence by the President that every Nigerian can live anywhere without
let or hindrance if meant to address the quit notice by Arewa youths against
Igbos is rather too short to address the clear and present danger that the
unwarranted threat represents. We are distressed by the refusal of the police
to comply with the arrest orders given by the Kaduna State Governor and the
Vice-President while the President was away. Instead of ensuring that these
orders are carried out, the President has now come to just make a bland comment
on the explosive issue. We are of the view that leadership requires more than
this at this crucial moment.
4. We acknowledge the President's admission
that there are “legitimate concerns" in the land .That is commendable .We
however disagree with his take that Nigeria is a "federation". Nigeria
ceased to be a federation since 1966 after the first coup. The turning of
Nigeria into a unitary constitution which is not conducive for peace and
development in a multiethnic country is what the military-imposed 1999 Constitution,
which lied against itself with the "We the people", is all about. This
is the taproot of the crisis of nationhood in Nigeria.
5. We do not accept the president's claim that
the National Assembly and the Council of State "are the legitimate and
appropriate bodies for national discourse". While we do not dispute that
these are legal bodies, we insist they are not appropriate bodies to discuss
the social contract that could bind us together as a nation-state. While the
composition of the National Assembly is clearly jigged and indeed one of the
bodies to be restructured, the Council of State is not open to Nigerians for
any discourse .If any "discourse” is to take place on constitutional
changes within the democratic framework Mr President is the one who has the
responsibility to initiate the process.
6.
We are equally miffed that the President talks about the serial onslaughts by
AK-47 wielding Fulani herdsmen against defenceless farmers as a conflict
between two quarrelling groups. In the last two years, the Fulani herdsmen have
become much more ferocious in their attacks against farmers in the South and
Middle Belt areas of the country with security forces shying away from
enforcing law and order. To present the various onslaughts on farmers by these
herdsmen as "two -fighting” would portray the President as taking sides
with the aggressive Meyiti Allah.
While we do not hold the administration
responsible for all the causes of agitations in Nigeria due to the crises of
unitary constitution, there are clearly many errors of commission and omission
the government has committed that have accentuated the strong
self-determination feelings across the country which only restructuring can tame:
1.
The insensitive and clearly lopsided recruitments /appointments into all
federal institutions .Even key prominent northern leaders have expressed openly
their disapproval of the pattern of appointments.
2.
Concentration of most of the heads of Armed Forces and other National Security
Agencies in a section of the country.
3. The President going on a global stage to
say he could not treat those who gave him 5% of their votes equally with those
who supported him with 97%
4. Official indifference to the murderous
activities of herdsmen against peace -loving citizens on their farms and other
settlements.
5. The flagrant breach of the constitutionally
enshrined Federal Character principle.
6. Appointment of Legal Adviser of Meyiti
Allah as Secretary of the Federal Character Commission.
7. The lopsided early retirement of mostly
southern senior officers from the Nigerian Armed forces and other security
services.
CONCLUSION
As elders who have spent most of our lives
fighting for the unity of the country based on justice, fairness and equity, we
call on the President to realize that the country is in a very bad shape at the
moment and requires statesmanship and not ethnic, religious, regional and
political partisanships. This is the time to renegotiate Nigeria along federal
lines negotiated by our founding fathers to stem the tide of separatist
feelings and agitations. This is why we do not accept that it portrays the
President in a favourable light to be away for a long period, only to return to
a badly fractured polity and avoid promoting a new dialogue for a better, just,
inclusive and peaceful country.
Chief
E K Clark. Chief Nnia
Nwodo. Chief R. F Fasoranti
Chief
A K Horsfall Prof Joe
Irukwu Chief
Ayo Adebanjo
(South – South) (South East) (South West)
(South – South) (South East) (South West)
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