The quarrel without a name

“Foolproof systems do not take into account the ingenuity of fools” Gene Brown 

Members of the planning committee of the National Dialogue must be scratching their heads over rising voices and tempers even before they fully engage Nigerians. An almighty quarrel is breaking out over every element of the dialogue gambit being flown by President Jonathan. Ordinarily, this should be sweet music to ears of advisers who thought the best thing for Jonathan in his present circumstances is to set everyone fighting everyone else, and have leaders erecting solid defences around divisive issues, which will give him the respite and room he needs to balance his posture, at least. What is going on, however, is far more damaging than what you would expect to see in opening skirmishes. The quarrels over what the initiative involves in the first place can torpedo the entire enterprise. It is becoming increasingly evident that most critical opinion will punch massive holes in the idea, and the President could end up being advised to handpick a few willing Nigerians to engage in polite conversations in Abuja under the guise of a national conference.

Even in circles which applauded the October 1^st announcement of plans to organize some form of forum to discuss the nation, there is rising anger and resentment that the President’s plans will not meet even the most minimal standards of a serious inquiry into the nature and functioning of our nation. Those who had canvassed for years for a Sovereign National Conference (SNC) now see the President selling the nation a dummy. What, they are asking, is the value of a dialogue, or conversation, or conference that will end up as a document in the archives? Professor Sagay, who needs no introduction in the SNC circuit believes that either of two things are happening. “Either the President doesn’t understand what he is doing by convoking a conference”, he told a paper, “or he is deliberately putting poison into the process to kill it from the beginning”.

The outrage which followed the President’s confirmation that the National Assembly will have the final say on the output of the process should be worrying the President. National Assembly? The same one set up by the same constitution which should be re-written by a conference with sovereign powers? How do you create legitimacy through an illegitimate institution?

In a part of the nation where President Jonathan expected a standing ovation, Tinubu landed and promptly rained on his parade. If you expected the legion of Yoruba intelligentsia and a whole army of SNC followers from the southwest to stone him to death, you were disappointed. The whimper of protest at Tinubu’s emphatic denunciation of the dialogue initiative reveal either of two things. One is that Tinubu is indisputably the voice of Yoruba people. The second is that Tinubu is a master at reading opinions and reactions particularly as they relate to President Jonathan’s policies, and he had correctly predicted that the President was way off the mark on the dialogue offer, and it was safe to shoot it down.

Mainstream opinion in the North is still scrutinizing the “Greek gift” with much suspicion and characteristic disharmony. In the last few days, however, a document allegedly written by the former chairman of the dialogue advisory committee, Professor Ben Nwabueze titled “North and South Divide” appears to be rallying the region to a more cohesive response. The story is that the lengthy document, which can only be described as a tragic epitaph of distinguished scholarship and activism by the aging Professor made the case for a National Conference on the back of the need to dismantle northern cohesion and unity because they represent the reasons for southern disunity and threats to national security. This document, the story goes, was the main impetus behind establishing the committee to advise on the organization of the dialogue.

Reading that document, one can only hope that even with the alarming fall in quality of intellectual and political assets around the President, it cannot be the case that it informed in any measure a raison d’être for the dialogue. The material represents a caricature of the nation’s entire history, and shows a very poor understanding of the complex socio-cultural nature and political character of the north. Consequently, it made some profoundly-questionable assumptions and conclusions on the current state of the North, and a potentially-damaging misreading of how it relates to and with the rest of Nigeria. The document now serves the North as a tonic for the healing of a largely self-induced damage, when it presents “true” and “minority” northerners as targets of a plan to weaken them further under a contrived need for “southern” hegemony.

The North is unlikely to dismiss the dialogue option as emphatically as Tinubu did, although it will see through it as a ploy to split it and place it on the defensive in a Nigeria where it is already very much on the margins. It is more likely to welcome a more genuine engagement with the rest of Nigeria, at which it will lay down its own long list of grievances, and quite possibly demands for far-reaching changes in the manner the nation is structured, and functions. To that extent, it will be reluctant to engage in a talkshop which will only divert attention from the fact Jonathan has many issues to settle with the North, and other poor Nigerians.

There are many angry voices that have not been raised yet. The East, another bastion of the National Conference champions is looking critically at Jonathan’s idea of a conference, and debating whether it is a rat or an elephant. M.E.N.D, or some of its variants say it means nothing to them. Chief E. Clark says it is Jonathan’s masterstroke, and it should, among other things, create a federation in which the North does not continue to get more of the revenue from the south-south’s resources through its underserved numbers of states and local governments. Hundreds of communities, pressure groups and state-seekers will chase the dialogue idea around to see if it represents one more avenue to pitch their tents. They will look to see if it will do more than receive and file a memo, or it will advance their causes further. If it is the former, they will join the queue of Nigerians who will denounce another expensive deception.

President Jonathan’s dialogue is likely to end up looking like a national quarrel. At this stage, the quarrel involves him and that select circle which thought they had finally broken through to a leadership which will hand them Nigeria to unravel and put together as they wish. It is finally sinking in: the dialogue offer is anything but what they wanted. They are already denouncing it as fraud. Politicians will quarrel with the meek effort to divert attention, and they will distance governments and communities from conferring any semblance of integrity on it. NBA, ASUU, NLC and leading professional associations and CSOs are likely to ask Jonathan to define what he wants. If he dithers, or responds in a manner which suggests that he plans to convene an expensive choreographed jamboree, they would abandon him without a dialogue. And to think this quarrel does not even have a name yet!