Even for many of those who supported the convocation of last year’s national conference, last Wednesday’s decision by the Goodluck Jonathan government to begin the implementation of the report about a week to a crucial election is hasty, indecent and grossly opportunistic. Barometer never supported the conference in the manner it was convoked, and many of its decisions are patently unrealistic and impractical. But to announce the commencement of the report’s implementation at the time they did is nothing but a flagrant abuse of trust and a clear attempt to hoodwink the gullible and misdirect the electorate a few days to the March 28 presidential election.
The plan to implement the report is childish. Nothing can be done in the next few days, even for the peripheral and insignificant items in the report involving only policy matters, or such items that are in the province of the Jonathan presidency to execute without legislation. For seven months, a government panel set up to examine what should be done with the report and the modalities of implementation wrestled with all sorts of scenario as to how to circumvent the absence of a legal framework for the conference, and make sense of many of its clearly ridiculous resolutions, such as the creation of additional 18 states. Apparently, the government had hoped that by conducting the conference and stalling for time, it could kill two birds with one stone: achieved the political purpose of satisfying the cravings of conference advocates, and making political capital out of winning the support of the electorate for the Goodluck Jonathan reelection plan.
For many critical months, those goals seemed on the surface to have been achieved. But while no other geopolitical zone cared a hoot what became of the conference report, considering especially that the conference decisions were neither fundamental nor revolutionary, the Southwest, for inexplicable reasons, became the chief advocates of the report. It satisfied many of their needs, a few Southwest leaders in the Yoruba political organisation, Afenifere, said enthusiastically. No, it didn’t, said many other Southwest leaders, some of them principled and ideological. Sensing that the conference report had further divided the Southwest, the Jonathan government pressed its luck and made cabinet appointments and created a momentum to ensure the divisions in the Southwest became ossified.
But even then neither the convocation of the conference itself, as a political tool for garnering support, nor the very essentials of the report assumed the overriding significance associated with it today as it did when the conference ended last August. It was a little after the conference ended that the All Progressives Congress (APC) served powerful notice it was here to stay. The party then proceeded to hold its primaries, including the all-important presidential primary that produced former head of state, Muhammadu Buhari, a retired army general with cult following in nearly all parts of the North. It was also soon after the conference that the government’s shambolic handling of the insurgency in the Northeast jumped exasperatingly for President Jonathan to the front burner, and the Chibok abductions of 219 schoolgirls became the totem of the Jonathan government’s failure.
Recognising that he was unlikely to receive a hearing, let alone a fair one, in the aggrieved and incensed North, President Jonathan has belatedly turned his gaze south, particularly to the Southwest, where an ideological conflict and power struggle was smouldering between the rump and conservative arm of the old Afenifere on one hand, and the aggressive, boisterous and iconoclastic ideologues of the Bola Ahmed Tinubu camp. The Asiwaju Tinubu camp was uninterested in taking prisoners in the conflict, and the Afenifere elders, together with a few young followers, remained implacable. There, smack in the middle of the conflict, jumped President Jonathan, with his conference report, which he promised to implement post haste. At bottom, he had no interest in the conference, not to talk of its many contradictory and weakened resolutions. But if he could make political capital out of it, why not.
Neither the president not his aides have tried to sell the conference report with any enthusiasm, for they have not even thoroughly studied its elements, not to talk of digesting them. And the president, in particular, has been spectrally silent on whether the report addresses lofty ideological and visionary ideas germane to the remaking and retooling of a nation sundering at the seams. But the aforesaid Afenifere elders have become the report’s salesmen, mouthing its attributes and encasing it in so much saccharine that even the report’s raconteurs are unlikely to recognise it as their handiwork. It took the dogged intervention of Femi Falana, a lawyer and conference participant, and Alani Akinrinade, a former Chief of Army Staff, Chief of Defence Staff, conference participant, and in fact leader of the Yoruba delegation to the conference, to put the lie to the infamous conclusion that the report met the aspirations of the Yoruba.
The hasty and incoherent attempt to begin implementing the conference report is nothing but a ploy to strengthen the hands of the faction of the Yoruba power elite arraigned in battle against the dominant regional power bloc led by Asiwaju Tinubu. The rest of the country is amused, for both the other geopolitical zones of the South and the entire North know that nothing can be done about the conference report until after the elections. But it does not stop Jonathan’s trusting friends in the Southwest from swallowing his boondoggle.
For many critical months, those goals seemed on the surface to have been achieved. But while no other geopolitical zone cared a hoot what became of the conference report, considering especially that the conference decisions were neither fundamental nor revolutionary, the Southwest, for inexplicable reasons, became the chief advocates of the report. It satisfied many of their needs, a few Southwest leaders in the Yoruba political organisation, Afenifere, said enthusiastically. No, it didn’t, said many other Southwest leaders, some of them principled and ideological. Sensing that the conference report had further divided the Southwest, the Jonathan government pressed its luck and made cabinet appointments and created a momentum to ensure the divisions in the Southwest became ossified.
But even then neither the convocation of the conference itself, as a political tool for garnering support, nor the very essentials of the report assumed the overriding significance associated with it today as it did when the conference ended last August. It was a little after the conference ended that the All Progressives Congress (APC) served powerful notice it was here to stay. The party then proceeded to hold its primaries, including the all-important presidential primary that produced former head of state, Muhammadu Buhari, a retired army general with cult following in nearly all parts of the North. It was also soon after the conference that the government’s shambolic handling of the insurgency in the Northeast jumped exasperatingly for President Jonathan to the front burner, and the Chibok abductions of 219 schoolgirls became the totem of the Jonathan government’s failure.
Neither the president not his aides have tried to sell the conference report with any enthusiasm, for they have not even thoroughly studied its elements, not to talk of digesting them. And the president, in particular, has been spectrally silent on whether the report addresses lofty ideological and visionary ideas germane to the remaking and retooling of a nation sundering at the seams. But the aforesaid Afenifere elders have become the report’s salesmen, mouthing its attributes and encasing it in so much saccharine that even the report’s raconteurs are unlikely to recognise it as their handiwork. It took the dogged intervention of Femi Falana, a lawyer and conference participant, and Alani Akinrinade, a former Chief of Army Staff, Chief of Defence Staff, conference participant, and in fact leader of the Yoruba delegation to the conference, to put the lie to the infamous conclusion that the report met the aspirations of the Yoruba.
The hasty and incoherent attempt to begin implementing the conference report is nothing but a ploy to strengthen the hands of the faction of the Yoruba power elite arraigned in battle against the dominant regional power bloc led by Asiwaju Tinubu. The rest of the country is amused, for both the other geopolitical zones of the South and the entire North know that nothing can be done about the conference report until after the elections. But it does not stop Jonathan’s trusting friends in the Southwest from swallowing his boondoggle.
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