The National Conference Bogey

The President had also visited Epe in Lagos State, Oyo and Ogbomoso towns in Oyo State where he met with the traditional rulers to further sell his candidancy to the people of the region. The President met with Alara of Ilara Epe, Oba Akeem Adesanya; the Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi III, and the Soun of Ogbomoso, Oba Oladunni Oyewumi Ajagungbade III, respectively. At the palace of the Alaafin, the President promised to fully implement the recommendations of the National Conference if given a fresh four-year mandate. He said he recognised how passionate the people of Oyo are about the implementation, even as he himself believes that 100 per cent implementation will bring the desired progress to the country. While the President was mining the National Conference for political gains in his meeting with the traditional rulers, some Yoruba leaders under the aegis of Afenifere, led by Govenor Olusegun Mimiko who is the zonal coordinator of his campaign in the South West converged on Akure, the Ondo State capital for a conference tagged: ‘’National Conference, 2015 Elections and the Yoruba Nation.” Those present at the event include Kunle Olajide, Biodun Olujimi, Makanjuola Ogundipe, Femi Okurounmu, Gboyega Isiaka, Jide Adeniyi, Yinka Odumakin and the Minister of State for Works, Dapo Adeyeye. Chief Ayo Adebanjo, an Afenifere chieftain and First Republic politician who chaired the occasion left no one in doubt that that Conference is all about Jonathan and 2015, though he tried, unsuccessfully, to dress it in a non partisan garb. “We are supporting Jonathan because of the consistency of the Yoruba to have this country restructured so that it can develop. People are calling for change. I want a change in the constitution of Nigeria. Only a change in the constitution can truly bring about the change that we need,” the octogenarian said in an obvious dig at the popular mantra of the opposition APC.

Mimiko who is the convener of the summit added that the implementation of the National Conference report will create room for each state to have its own constitution, its own police force, its own prison service, create its own local government, build its own airports, sea ports and railways among others. “In the economic domain, solid minerals that had been the exclusive preserve of the Federal Government since independence, have now been brought to the concurrent list. States can now create employment and develop at their own pace. With all that, it liberates everybody; it opens up the political space,” Mimiko who accused those he said had been scheming “to hijack power so as to throw the Confab report to the dustbin of history,” said.

•L-R: Ondo State Governor Dr Olusegun Mimiko; Afenifere chieftain, Chief Ayo Adebanjo and the founder of Oodua People Congress, OPC, Dr Frederick Fasehun, at the post-national conference summit in Akure

Also, in their goodwill messages, Federick Faseun, the Founder of the O’odua Peoples Congress, and Gani Adams, the National Coordinator said the National Conference report remained a vehicle for actualising the Yoruba dream of a prosperous South-West and that the South West must support Jonathan’s second term ambition. In other words, this will, according to them, give him the opportunity of implementing the report.

A similar forum was held in Ibadan, the capital of the old Western region last Thursday. For the President, the idea of the conference was like baiting the South West where he had become unpopular. However, most Nigerians were suspicious of the intentions of Jonathan when he first mooted the idea of organising a national conference late 2013.

Mining the National Conference Report for Political Advantage

For one, the President before then cannot be counted among the rabid supporters of radical economic and political restructuring of the country which the advocates of the idea envisaged will be the key outcome of the Conference. Indeed, the leadership of the then Action Congress of Nigeria, the party in control of the South West part of Nigeria where agitation for the conference had been most vociferous for several decades, did the unthinkable by immediately declaring that they will not be part of the initiative they had always agitated for. ACN which was just formalising its merger talks with other political parties to form a mega opposition that will bring the Northern and South West part of the country into a political alliance since the formation of Nigeria, believed that the idea of the Conference was a distraction to the new political marriage.

The reasons for this are obvious. While key leaders of the defunct ACN, led by a former Lagos governor, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, are strong advocates of national conference and had even spent their resources in promoting the idea, the Northern partners in the new political alliance now crystallized into All Progressives Congress, APC have been traditionally opposed to the idea which they believe was aimed at taking away some of the advantages currently enjoyed by their region in the present configuration of Nigeria. A wholesale embrace of the idea was therefore capable of causing a debilitating dissension among members of the new political union. This was why Bishop Matthew Kukah, the Catholic Archbishop of Sokoto Province, in an interview, described the idea of national conference by Jonathan as a coup against the opposition. “He has snookered the opposition. Jonathan has just successfully staged a bloodless ideological coup against the agitators and his enemies,” Bishop Kukah said of the National Conference while Tinubu himself described it as a Greek gift.

•Bishop Kukah: Confab, an ideological war against the opposition

Thus, Governors which now belonged to the new party by virtue of the merger, including those of the South West initially said they would not participate in the conference. “They believe correctly that the proposal is largely popular with the Nigerian populace, moreso, the South West, and may therefore give the sponsor mileage and wind in its sail in the race towards 2015. The political advantage is actually greater than that. It has stolen the thunder of a major political peg on which the South West faction of Alliance for Progressive Change had anchored its legitimacy,” Akin Osuntokun, a former presidential aide and a member of the ruling party said while agreeing with those who argued that President Jonathan was set to benefit politically from convening the Conference.