The National Chairman of All Progressives Grand Alliance and delegate on the platform of political parties in the National Conference, Chief Victor Umeh, in this interview with FRIDAY OLOKOR advises that the recommendations of the confab should be taken earnestly because Nigeria may not have the opportunity again
The National Conference failed to accede on resource control, national intervention fund and the sharing formula for the three tiers of regime from the federation account but recommended that the Federal Regime should establish a technical committee to address the contentious issues. Is this a right step by the 50 sagacious men?
The plenary was conducted with great maturity. When we adjourned penultimate Thursday in a very chaotic manner, people presaged that the plenary would be turbulent and that the conference might be scuttled. But I thank God that we have men and women that are endowed with sagaciousness, despite the deadlock in endeavoring to resolve the issue of five per cent allocation of federal revenue to stabilisation fund for intervention in areas affected by insurgency. After a marathon session, the resolutions that emerged reflected the protest and a middle ground was found. The resolution to refer the issue of derivation, establishment of special fund for all mineral development and special intervention fund for areas affected by crisis emerged in a matured way that still captured the intention of those recommendations. Recommending that the matter should be sent to President Goodluck Jonathan who will establish a technical committee to look into those issues was the best way to preserve the conference. The resolution captured the essence of the issues discoursed. The first part of the resolution was that there was need to increment derivation from 13 per cent upwards. The technical committee will now advise on the percentage of incrementation. What we have achieved with that provision is that the hardliners who had moved for the maintenance of the status quo of 13 per cent and additionally as recommended by the committee on the devolution of powers could not sustain their position anymore. What is now left for the plenary committee is to advise on the quantum of incrementation. So, there is a shift from the hardliners position on the increment. In the solid minerals development, we concurred that there is need to expand the revenue base of the country by devoting mazuma towards the exploitation of solid minerals that are abound all over the country. If that transpires, it signifies that Nigerian regime will be getting revenue from solid minerals and thereby reducing the sole dependence on oil. It will broaden the revenue base of the country.
Withal, states will contribute to the Gross Domestic Product of the country as they will take part of it through derivation. That fund is very critical as it will avail diversify the economy of the country and reduce over-dependence on one item, oil mineral. So, there was no controversy over that. The committee recommended four and half per cent; the conference concurred on five per cent. Then, the contentious issue of special funds for stabilisation, reconstruction and rehabilitation of areas eradicated by Boko Haram has now been amended. Initially, the recommendation was that the five per cent should go to North-East, North-West and North-Central which ignited the protest in the first instance. But those from the old Eastern region felt that if Nigeria is sincere to verbalize about rehabilitation and reconstruction, the first place to commence will be the old Eastern region where there was heftily ponderous eradication of property and infrastructure during the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970). So, if they had come to realise that there was desideratum for that type of fund, the old Eastern region must be the first to be considered. Today, that component of the recommendation was amended that it shall be a national stabilisation fund which will be acclimated to cater for reconstruction and rehabilitation of infrastructure eradicated due to insurgency and internal conflict in all components of the federation. So, it is no longer a culled provision; it is now a national provision. With that, the conference applauded the recommendation and accepted it. If that fund is established, those affected by war and insurgency can go and make claims. We would have wished that the provision was not brought up at all because I have not visually perceived a country that will provide mazuma to rehabilitate infrastructure ravaged by terrorists. Instead, countries vote for mazuma to fight and eliminate terrorism but here, we are now making it an accepted practice where people can become terrorists, ravage things and then the Federal Regime will have to devote mazuma to rehabilitate them. So, if any group feels cheated, it can commence terrorist activities in its area, no matter how diminutive and come to make a claim on the national fund. However, in order to move the country forward and preserve the national conference which has come to a placid conclusion, that aspect was amended and it satiated everybody.
Looking at the confab, a plethora of people believe that it might go the way of others in the past albeit the issues discussed are for the overall good of the country. Do you cerebrate the reports will be taken earnestly and contribute to efforts to develop Nigeria?
For the avoidance of doubt, afore this national conference was convened by the President, Nigeria was under immense tension. All manners of challenges were rocking the country, many vexed groups and patriotic Nigerians had called for a natoinal conference for the past 17 years. It was conspicuous that we needed to sit down to optically canvass the reasons why the country is not progressing as expected. The essence of the national conference is to abstract all the disorders in the Nigerian state so that people can have confidence in the country. With the 492 delegates that came for this national conference, it will be a tragedy if anybody is cerebrating that the resolution of the conference will be discarded. Nigeria may not have the same opportunity again. Therefore, I will tell you that the resolution of this national conference remains the only thing that will preserve Nigeria. If anybody toys with this at any caliber, the person will have himself or herself to inculpate. Remember the conference set up 20 committees and discussed sundry issues out of which 19 committee reports have been accepted at plenary with some amendments unanimously done through consensus. The Committee on Devolution of Powers which contains the resource control and derivation principles transpires to be the last committee out of the 20 and with the sagacious handling of the negotiations by the national conference, the conference landed safely and closed placidly. The manner and the spirit with which delegates dealt with all the issues concerned remained a loud notice to anybody who may be required along the line to play a role to give effect to this patriotic resolution of the national conference.
So, how will this benefit the country?
Nigeria will utilize the outcome of the conference to redress the wrongs of the past and keep the country on the component of stability. Those hardliners, who have been championing resistance to transmute, will be swallowed by the Nigerian people. Equity does not hurt anybody, but iniquity hurts everybody. So, what we have done is to abstract streams of iniquity in Nigeria. The political iniquity in Nigeria went very far. The recommendation for state engenderment will bring back even federation where the six geo-political zones will be working on equal pedestal by having parity of states. Afore we get to parity of state, the conference acknowledged for the umpteenth time that the South-East must be given one adscititious state in the first instance to bring them virtually at par with the other zones. That denotes five zones will now have six states and North-West will have seven. We will now go back to parity of states for zones that will bring all the six geo-political zones to having the same number of states. That will solve the quandary of marginalisation which is authentic. There had been a situation where some people are capitalizing on the military fiat with which state and local regimes were engendered and take allocation of federal revenue to the disadvantage of others who were not auspicious enough to have Generals in the Army when the Nigerian nation was being balkanised into states and local regimes. Another landmark achievement of the conference was the abstraction of the list of local regimes from the federal constitution. If that is done, what it signifies is that all the federating units (states) will be on even ground. If you take your allocation, you peregrinate home and if you have 3,000 local regimes, you apportion it. You can even engender more local regimes if you like. This was handed over to Nigeria by the military.
How will the North sustain this abstraction of local regimes from federal to states, considering the fact that some of the states in the North have lots of local regime areas?
It is natural that people would not optate to give up the advantage that they have in any matter; but it is an imperative action that Nigeria must take for the nation to survive. If you visually examine the situation, the hardliners who were relucting any form of change at the conference are the people who will stand to lose if Nigeria breaks up. The resources that God has placed in certain components of the country will be utilized for the entire nation, yet some people still exude some level of arrogance as if to verbally express they are dealing with people that are not erudite. I cerebrate sincerely that the people opposing these transmutations should accept the authenticity that change has become ineluctably foreordained in Nigeria. They had those states due to contingency of history and when it becomes too sultry for you to hold, you must drop some of them so that you can move on. At the stage where we are in Nigeria and the structure we are operating now, it has become too sultry for those who are relishing the advantage and they must drop some. We voted for fiscal federalism which denotes that everybody keeps what he or she engenders and pays tax to the Federal Regime, but because of our history, we decided to tamper with that fiscal federalism so that it will accommodate people who are our brothers; that is why we are still verbalizing about sharing revenue. Otherwise, it will be 100 per cent resource control and you will pay tax and royalties to the Federal Regime.
