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Seeing through the ‘National Think Tank’

May 11, 2007

For days now, some national newspapers have been carrying an advertorial by a group that brands itself the “National Think Tank”. Presented as a “CALL TO SERVICE”, the signatories to the advert proceeded to inform us (the public) that they are “at the final stage of compiling the names of nominees who will participate in a National Think Tank that will fashion out an agenda for the country”. They then listed hundreds of names of people they declared to be “eminent Nigerians…nominated by individuals, organizations and institutions at home and abroad” for the stated purpose. Now, I do not have a problem with the names listed, because from all indications these persons were not consulted before their names are now being bandied around as members or proposed members of this organization, as they are still expected to declare their preparedness “to serve”. However, I do have a problem with those who put this idea together and their choice of time to put this into effect.


 

 

These adverts began to appear immediately after the elections, at a time the national and international communities were and still are unanimous in their condemnation of the officially sanctioned high crimes that went on in the name of elections, in spite of Prof Iwu’s shameless chest-thumping and Obasanjo’s persistent, but clearly meretricious attempt to change reality. The natural question therefore is why these people didn’t find it within themselves to say something about these evidently shameful elections and the moral and legal clouds still hanging over them. Why have they chosen to ignore the cries of decent people about the outcome only to attempt to use the credibility of some of the names listed to establish the Yar’Adua “victory” as a fait accompli? Expectedly, they’re likely to deny this, but where you have organizers or facilitators who are top card-carrying members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and who’re very close to Umar Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan, what other motive can we read into the whole scheme?

 

Who mandated them “to fashion out an agenda for the country”? Of course, any group of persons can come together with the aim of fashioning solutions to some of our socio-economic and political problems, but to begin to present such private initiatives as “call to service” and the like smacks of opportunism and desperation. Indeed, doing this at a time the legitimacy of the incoming administration is seriously in doubt reveals a clear lack of consideration for the feelings of the long-suffering Nigerian people. No group can railroad Nigerians into an ideological cul-de-sac, because we are in the main a vibrant and discerning people. We are ideas people, a patient people, a forgiving but expectant people. Every nation, like every man and like every rope, has a breaking strain and Nigeria and Nigerians are no exceptions.

 

It is not a secret that the main reason the Obasanjo administration has failed, especially in its second term, is the lack of legitimacy introduced by the massively rigged elections of April 2003 (that is, supposing for one reason or the other, Nigerians or most Nigerians accept that of 1999 as okay in the circumstances). Where a government lacks legitimacy, it is more likely not to trust the people. It will be more prone to lawlessness, impunity and arbitrariness. Its natural inclination would be to always assault the rule of law, suborn the judiciary and the legislature and generally ensure that the will of the electoral highwaymen is imposed at all times on the rest of the nation. The overall effect of all these is that rather than supposedly elected officials concentrating on the legitimate business of government, they spend more time fighting each other to retain or claim power and more power without any clear idea about how to use this power to benefit the nation and her people. Obasanjo is probably right to proclaim that we’ve always had a history of electoral abracadabra, but to insist that we let it be or to insist that world opinion should leave us alone or be rubbished is an eloquent testimony to the terrible pains he’s perpetually inflicted on the people. Apart from the obvious embarrassment, it is an attack on our national integrity for anyone to tell the world that this is the best we can offer. After all, almost fourteen years ago, without Prof Iwu’s sophisticated electoral gadgets, Nigeria under a military regime was able to organize an election that was acclaimed at home and abroad as free and fair, even though it was ultimately annulled by General Ibrahim Babangida and his cohorts.

 

Thus, any proper reading of our political situation would inevitably lead us to the conclusion that what is first needed to credibly “fashion out an agenda for the country” is a truly legitimate government freely elected by the people. In Nigeria’s case, because we do not have this kind of government now and are not likely to have it with the latest elections, we will have to find a way to return to the point of legitimacy by other legitimate means. I do not believe this lies anywhere with an Interim National Government (ING) or any other unconstitutional contraption. Our point of legitimacy right now is an idea, the idea of a Sovereign National Conference.

 

A true Sovereign National Conference (not the sort of sickening and self-serving parodies put in place by Abacha and Obasanjo and certainly, not a presumptuous National Think Tank unilaterally conjured up on the pages of newspapers) is the answer. Umar Yar’Adua must now earn his spurs. He must put his education, ideology and worldview to use being a student of the ideologically dependable Mallam Aminu Kano. Where is the justice in the Niger-Delta? Where is the justice in the national breadbasket being ripped apart by rapacious greed and monumental neglect and killing of a people? Where is the justice in a nation so blessed, yet rendered so hopeless by vacant, sinisterly acquisitive and wasteful leadership? Who makes the decision about what Nigerians want and what they don’t want and where is the scientific and empirical proof that what the supposedly enlightened establishment is delivering today is anything more than a teeny-weeny mouse where the herald had since trumpeted the arrival of an elephant? Where is the justice in championing such negative minimalism in the face of the storms we face as a nation under God?

 

First, Umar Yar’Adua will have to lead the establishment to recognize that we need to talk now and that we need to put heads together to create a formula outside the present electoral system to put the machinery for such talk in place. It is no good promising electoral reform when you sit atop the loot of the last election. Yar’Adua’s first job should be to purge INEC immediately and then use the new INEC (which hopefully would be created and established in all ways to be independent of government) to organize a respectable election to choose ethnic and national representatives of the people for the Sovereign National Conference. The conference must have constituent powers, there must be no no-go areas and a time-stipulated process involving extensive and exhaustive deliberations and consultation with Nigerians everywhere must be sine qua non.

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