Waiting for Clark at the Conference
Well before Chief Edwin Clark could unfold the South-South’s well known agenda of taking control of the country’s oil revenues, the Lamido of Adamawa, His Royal Highness, Alhaji Muhammadu Barkindo Mustapha, has given the delegates and entire country a piece of his mind. He said he had sat down for three days watching, listening to other delegates and was twice disallowed from speaking. And when he finally got the opportunity to speak, Alhaji Mustapha said and I quote: “If something happens and the country disintegrates, God forbids, many of those who are shouting their heads off will have nowhere to go”. For emphasis, His Royal Highness added: “And if we are pushed to the wall, we will easily walk out of this conference...... Mr Chairman, jingoism is not the monopoly of anyone. Everyone here is a potential jingoist.” Nor is it Lamido alone who feels the same way; the vast majority of Northerners who have been following what is happening, particularly the colourings of Jonathan’s conference, believe that this time the North is ready for anything that may come out of the gathering.
Of course, this cannot stop Chief Clark from taking his time to ask for 100% control of the oil receipts by the SouthSouth, as Barrister Mike Ozekhome has indicated they would. For Chief Clark, fiscal federalism or the so called resource control for the South-South should be the minimum concession to expect from the conference. Chief Clark, a rabid supporter of President Jonathan, stunned the world last year when he declared that no Northerner should seek the presidential ticket on the platform of the ruling party. According to him, Jonathan must run, win and rule on PDP ticket in 2015. But having heard from the Lamido of Adamawa, Chief Clark may now have to rephrase his opening any time he is going to table the so called resource control matter. The chief requires all the wisdom his 80-plus years in life can afford him in introducing that agitation. The South-South demand for resource control will, from all indications, be blocked by the North. It is possible that the North has no agenda at this conference except to block what it disagrees with.
Recall that the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar, has even if belatedly, led a delegation to President Goodluck Jonathan to protest the preponderance of Christian membership of the conference over that of Muslims. By keeping down the number of Muslim delegates to 183 compared to 302 Christian, Jonathan has demonstrated that he doesn’t give a damn about fairness in constituting a conference charged with proffering solutions to the problems confronting our country and its citizens. When Muslims in the South West observed that they had been marginalised in the selection of delegates representing their own part of the country, Pastor Tunde Bakare dismissed them. He said what the delegation was going to do there had nothing to do with religion. But when the conference chairman, Justice Kutigi, prefaced his speech with an Islamic prayer in Arabic, Bakare loudly objected. Suddenly, it became a matter of religion. In any case, it fully becomes a matter of religion whenever you come to implement the decisions of the conference.
In addition to its composition, the agenda of pro-Jonathan delegates, any time it is unfolded, has the potential to torpedo the conference because the North will reject it. This is why I find doubtful the advertised cooperation and coordination of conference agenda between the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) and the Middle Belt Forum. Sooner than later, the Chairman of ACF, Alhaji Ibrahim Coomassie, will find out that Professor Jerry Gana is at the conference to work for Jonathan’s re-election like he attempted to do for President Obasanjo at the so called National Political Reform Conference (NPRC) in 2005. If Coomassie has a different agenda from this, then he and Gana can only walk a short distance.
As usual, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has advised President Jonathan not to listen to Muslims cry of marginalisation in the composition of the conference as presented by the Sultan and his delegation. They have charged the Sultan to include “shunis” (Sunnis?) in his delegation to the president and to avail Christians land to build churches. Blimey! Does the Sultan give Muslims land to build mosques? If CAN is the prayer wing of the Peoples Democratic Party of Nigeria, it can be safely assumed that President Jonathan is their patron. No wonder many pastors have bought jets to fly all over the world to shepherd the flock. No wonder Jonathan is the first Nigerian Christian leader to go to Jerusalem, Israel, on pilgrimage. No wonder Jonathan has vowed to move out of Aso Villa and go from one church to another to worship with Christians at the end of every month.
Chief Chukwuemeka Ezeife is also expected to ask for an additional state for the South East. I have heard Dr Junaidu Muhammed, the delegate from Kano; say this proposal is dead on arrival and that his own part of the country will not accept the creation of another state for just one section of Nigeria.
This is not the conference NADECO asked for. It is not the conference The Patriots angled for and it surely is not the conference the North is expecting. The timing of Jonathan’s 7 billion naira conference, its composition and the subsisting issues it is going to discuss in three months will show that it may well be a wasted effort. However, if the objective of calling this conference is to ensure Nigerians go to the 2015 elections divided, it will probably achieve that.
(Editor’s note: Part I of this column was published on March 11.)