2005 confab report copies distributed to suya sellers
The Civil Rights Congress of Nigeria yesterday distributed copies of the 2005 national political conference report to suya, cake sellers and butchers in an apparent mockery of the ongoing confab.
According to the president of the congress, Shehu Sani, copies of the report of the confab that gulped N3 billion will be of better use to the suya and pancake sellers, noting that they had become useless. Addressing newsmen at the distribution venue, Sani expressed fear that the ongoing national conference that is gulping N7billion will also go the same way as past conferences, saying it is clear that the problems bedevilling Nigeria do not need conferences to solve.
“This has always been the fate of such documents in Nigeria. It has become part of our national culture. We have seen hundreds and thousands of committees set up. These documents have been lying in this office since 2005, waiting that perhaps one day, government would see the wisdom in using the documents in re-packaging the country for the better”.
“Nigeria is a nation that moves from one conference to the other, conferences have become a formality through which public funds are wasted. This was the conference former president Olusegun Obasanjo inaugurated and spent N3 billion on in 2005 which yielded no result and now President Goodluck Jonathan has embarked on a similar conference spending N7 billion. This is another national waste because the poor are getting poorer, innocent people are being killed on a daily basis while unemployment is alarmingly increasing,” he said.
“Eminent Nigerians including Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah and Justice Niki Tobi of the Supreme Court among others spent over six months in Abuja to fashion out a new political direction that would sustain our great country. Thousands of memoranda were received by the confab, and billions of tax payers’ money was spent. There is nothing to be discussed in the ongoing national confab that has not been discussed in the past national political conference under Obasanjo,” Sani added.
The leader of Kilishi sellers in Ungwar Sarki, Mallam Hashiru Mai Kilishi, expressed delight over the distribution of the documents to them, saying they desired more.
“Since we, the poor are not considered at the national conference, we see this gift as our own share of the conference. In fact, we are expecting more of this kind of papers from the ongoing conference because we know that documents that will be produced at the end will also become wastes,” he said.