Let us quarrel

 “The ruin of a nation begins in the homes of its people.” African Proverb.

You would have thought that the large volumes of reports, recommendations and annexes presented to President Jonathan by the Advisory Committee on the National Conference late last year will be the headache of the Presidency. Making sense of the babble which trailed the committee across the land could not have been easy to handle by a group of people ranging from the long-converted to the most cynical. The committee had already registered a number of casualties, from a member who attempted to thug-out a governor who said the wrong things, to the torpedo released by Prof Ben Nwabueze (SAN) when he demanded the right to write a draft constitution that should represent the focus of the Conference from his living room, even while the Advisory Committee he would have chaired was still working. The committee managed to put together a report from thousands of discordant views and submitted it to a president who has already set aside billions for the event. Most  members of the committee must have felt some relief that they had concluded a tough assignment which had sapped all their energies.

But the chairman of the Advisory Committee Senator Femi Okurounmu apparently has a lot of energy left. Certainly enough energy to take on Professor Ben Nwabueze (SAN) and the entire Igbo Leaders of Thought over their comments on the report of the committee he had chaired. Not one to let a fight pass by, the Senator was offended by statements made by Nwabueze & co. “Hear-say”!, he thundered at some of the claims of the Igbo Leaders of Thought, asserting that the comments from Nwabueze’s compatriots were mischievous fabrications by people who want to raise the level of resistance against the conference. His language leaves no one in doubt over his anger. He almost sounds like one of President Jonathan’s spokesman defending the report against Nwabueze’s assaults; “... the chicanery of the critics must be exposed...”  Then again, “the Nwabueze-led group has clearly gone beyond the bounds of decency and decorum by fabricating a report purely from their own imagination and levelling such scathing criticisms against it with a view to discrediting the real report, which it was obvious they have not yet seen.” Then he rounded up with a few choice words for the criticisms. He said they are “wild, mendacious, obfuscatory and ill- intentioned.”

If they did not know already, foes will be reluctant to provoke this Senator with his arsenal of language henceforth. But what was the provocation responsible for such anger, even from a man not particularly known for his mild temperament? Let us see. First, he was the chairman of the Committee whose report he says Nwabueze and his fellow concerned elders are fictionalizing. Before you feel some sympathy for the chair, please recall that he was chair only because the Nwabueze whose chicanery he says should be exposed said he was too ill to take up the life-time opportunity. Indeed, some circles suggest that he recommended the name of Okurounmu as chair in his place. No matter. Nwabueze had tried to rain on Okurounmu’s parade earlier when he asked to be allowed to craft the end-product of a conference Okurounmu and colleagues were advising on. Then words began to filter out that his replacement on the committee, Barrister Asemota was becoming quite a handful, with a suspected stimulus from the aging Nwabueze. Some said he even wrote a minority report. President Jonathan recently said he had not. If Mr Asemota did write and submit a minority report, the President’s denial of its existence could be a major irritant that may explain this spat.

All these sins pale into insignificance, however, compared to the reported demand by the Igbo Leaders of Thought that the recommendations of the Conference should not be submitted to the National Assembly as they claimed they know Okunroumu’s committee had advised. They said they are aware that the Advisory Committee had recommended a constitutional Amendment rather than a wholesale replacement, and this unmentionable heresy is rejected in totality. 

Senator Okuruoumu said, who told you? Did you see the report? He knows they did not read the report because that was certainly not what his committee recommended. Since he will not say what his committee recommended either, we can safely assume that it did not recommend that the National Assembly should have the final say on the recommendations of the conference. It is also safe to assume that the committee has not recommended a constitutional amendment, whatever else it suggested should be done to, or about our 1999 constitution as amended. 

All this is terribly perplexing, and leaves simple folks with a load of questions, only one or two dealing with meaning of words like mendacious and obfuscatory. Why is Okurounmu so desperate to defend the conference? We know that he had served extended time in the national conference trenches, but are there traces of an ethnic falling-out over the new direction of the national conference adventure in this high brow quarrel? Has Nwabueze’s group virtually placed a stamp of Igbo rejection on the national conference on the basis of how they think or know it is being conceived? Will they go out on a limb with such specific denunciation of key areas if they have had no inkling of contents of the report? In these days when virtually every important document is guaranteed to be massively leaked, how can Okurounmu be sure there are no leaked copies? Or pirated copies?  Or versions of the report leaked to Nwabueze by a member or two who have grievances to settle? 

More to the point, where does all this leave the national conference initiative? Igbo Leaders of Thought think it will be a wasteful jamboree if it is not organized exactly the way Nwabueze has always thought it should. They will not stop President Jonathan from organizing it, but they can make sure that one or two distinguished grey hairs from Igboland are missing in the line up whenever it is convened. Seventeen opposition governors are also likely to spoil the game, and between them and the Igbo Leaders, they will deprive the conference of much legitimacy. Strong opinions against the conference have been registered in many parts of the North as well. Professional groups are unsure of the value of a government-organized parley that could  heat up the nation or produce waste  at great cost. You will have to search hard and long before you find much enthusiasm for the national conference in some remote geriatric circles, mostly in the South-West.

Still, President Jonathan will have his National Conference, even if only for the fact that Senator Okurounmu has submitted a report, and there is N7b set aside to be spent on it. To be fair, there are also one or two additional reasons. Ethnic and interest groups will send in representatives only because others will also do so; and no one wants their entire future negotiated away behind their backs. There will also be politicians who will use the National Conference to catch the attention of voters towards the 2015 elections. Finally, there wil be another opportunity to quarrel over the form, structure, utility and future of a nation which has clocked 100 years; only this time, it will all be paid for by a public which just wants things to work.