For over a decade, calls for a Sovereign National Conference (SNC) had reached a deafening crescendo in Nigeria. Proponents of the conference saw it as an avenue to find and address the key problems afflicting Nigeria since 1914 to present.  The ace constitutional-lawyer, Gani Fawehinmi of blessed memory put it succinctly in the year 2000:
 “...The concern is to remove all obstacles which have prevented the country from establishing political justice, economic justice, social justice, cultural justice, religious justice and to construct a new constitutional frame-work in terms of the system of government-structurally, politically, economically, socially, culturally and religiously.”

The above description vividly captures the salient aspects of injustices that have manifested in various ramifications, and seem to have been moulded into the prevalent culture of hate, intolerance, acrimony, ethnocentrism, blood-letting, restiveness, pogroms, south-north dichotomy, west-east divide, deprivation, underdevelopment, infrastructural decay, lack of basic amenities, unemployment, poverty, corruption, criminality, insecurity and state failure. One of the major issues is the lack of will by the ruling class to get things done, and rightly. Whenever a national crisis arises, those at the helm of affairs treat it with infidelity. That seems to be an established pattern.

Here we are, talking about SNC. The Aburi Conference of 1967 provided an opportunity for representatives of shades of Nigerian governments to discuss and avert imminent greater crises which were to follow. But the squandering of the Aburi Accord by the Yakubu Gowon-led Military junta spelt disaster for the fledgling independent former British colony peaked by the Biafran War of attrition which claimed the lives of 3.5 million Biafrans.  Aburi was a promise not kept. The aftermath of the failure to take advantage of it is why Nigeria is still wandering in the dark, nearly five decades on.

Let the truth be told. Nigerians are yet to be fervent in self-appraisal. Some of the scars and repulsive misdeeds of the Nigerian forces are staring us in the face, but they are vainly wished away. Sadistic orgies, such as the Massacres which they had perpetrated on hapless civilians in: 1967 Asaba Massacres and Onitsha Massacre in 1968 won’t go away, until people acknowledge the wrongfulness of such acts with unreserved apologies. No student who fails their exams can scale through repeating the same mistakes. Military forces follow orders...whose orders? – The man behind the mask?

The eventual triumph of the Nigerian federal forces gave the impression of an end to all forms of self-determination agitations in the new Nigeria, which has been unified by the conquest of Biafra. Perhaps, the non-implementation of the country’s three Rs programme – Rehabilitation, Reconciliation, and Reconstruction by the very same architects of the programme was the beginning of the loss of the peace. The three Rs meant to reintegrate the former Biafran territories into the socio-political life of Nigeria were substituted with covert and overt marginalization policies of the war-battered region. This singular act of reneging by the Nigerian government indeed relived the reneging of the regime from the Aburi Accord, an accord which, if implemented would have staved off the war and its consequences. And it is perceived that the Nigerian Military government was unrepentant for its inglorious role in Biafra, and unwilling to extend a lifeline to the survivors in the beleaguered territory. Thus, the proclamation of the three Rs merely served as an image-making stunt, an attempt by the regime to paint a picture of benevolence towards the one-time enemy territory which bore the brunt of war. The world was once again duped into believing that all was well. The three Rs programme was another promise not kept.

Religion has always been used as a political and ethnic tool in Nigeria to unleash mayhem on people of different ideologies, different ethnic groups, and different religious beliefs. It’s been used to pursue an extremist agenda, seek to domineer and exert political control, continue an expansionist policy, and hinder the forward movement of the country in civility. A lot of the attacks principally target a certain ethnic group. Historically, the Igbo are the most targeted and worst hit. It all started with Jos riots of 1945, in which Igbo people were attacked. Again in 1953, “anti-Ibo riots broke out in the north in protest of Ibo domination of social, political, business and military institutions. Ibos were hunted down and attacked in Kano, 245 were injured and more than 52 were killed. The southern Yoruba did not participate in the fighting.” [Ref World].

The Maitatsine religious onslaught took Northern Nigeria by storm in the best part of the 1980s. The so-called riots are never dealt with to forestall recurrence, hence the incessancy. Perpetrators of these bloody riots are never punished. In its January 21, 2010 editorial “Not Just Jos”, Vanguard writes:
“Any attempt to bring the perpetrators of the riots to book starts another riot. The November 2008 riot is the subject of two probes, the Justice Bola Ajibola panel by the Plateau State Government, which has finished its work and the on going General Emmanuel Abisoye panel of the Federal Government.
Riots date a little bit further and in the North appear to be used in furthering religious hegemony. They have been extended to political disputes and in some instances poorly managed ethnic relations. Some major riots – riots Jos in 1945, Kano in 1957, most parts of northern Nigeria in 1966, Kano in 1980, Maiduguri in 1982, Jimeta in 1984, Gombe in 1985, Kaduna and Kafanchan in 1991, Bauchi, Katsina, and Kano in 1991, Zango-Kataf in 1992, Funtua in 1993, Kano in 1994 and 2000, Kaduna Sharia riot 2001, Jos 2004, Kano 2004 and Kano 2007, Maiduguri, Bauchi, Yobe and Kano in 2009. The losses have been estimated at over 100,000 and property worth billions of Naira.
More than 6,000 people perished in the December 1980 Maitatsine in Kano, which spread to Yola, Maiduguri, Bauchi and Gombe. Maitatsine sects have been regrouping under different names since then, wrecking havoc wherever they go.
Rioters target churches under the cloak of religious differences. When Muslim sects disagree, they burn churches, and attack non-Muslims. Riots are more political than religious.
Estimates of deaths from riots in Jos and other towns in Plateau State since 2001 are in the 4,000 mark.” [Vanguard]

Needless to assert that since 2002, another Islamic militant group known as Boko Haram has stepped into the fray, having a similar ideology as Maitatsine, continuing the onslaught – bombing, killing, destroying, maiming and uprooting people from their chosen places of residency. Apart from recruiting locals, Boko Haram is said to have enlisted the help of Muslim fighters from neighbouring Chad. The inability of the federal government to protect its people and guarantee them the modest benefits accruable to citizenship is a promise not kept. Of course, if citizens feel threatened, unprotected and failed by their State, they reserve the right to self-determination. There’s no point being a denizen in your own country!

Bizarrely, some ethnic groups in Nigeria had supported the wrong cause, thinking that the weakness of one would be their own gain. So far, they have been proven wrong. By this miscalculation, they played into an agenda which created hegemony and reduced the polity to naught. In spite of disloyalty to their Igbo kith and kin and sabotaging of the Biafran revolution, the Eastern minorities were treated as a conquered territory alongside their Igbo neighbours. They were made to suffer the same deprivation as the Igbo. To their chagrin, it was a Nigerian promise not to be fulfilled. In place of promise, they were rewarded with abject poverty, environmental degradation occasioned by oil spillage, underdevelopment, loss of means of livelihood, and so forth. This ugly situation gave rise to indigenous people’s agitations for resource control and environmental protection. In response, the government met their demands with high-handedness and military suppression yielding the likes of Umuechem Massacre in 1990, 1995 Execution of the Ogoni 9, and Odi Massacre in 1999. All these culminated into youth restiveness, the militancy and militarisation of the Niger Delta, sabotage of oil pipelines, advent of kidnapping for ransom and other criminalities. All these have resulted in a sense of disillusionment in the region which lent urgency to some forms of discussion and restructuring.
Zaki Ibiam massacre of 2001 in the Middle Belt deserves a mention as one of those incidents which occurred when people trusted the word of their government without realizing it was an ambush.

After the fall of the apartheid regime, South Africa’s legitimate government set up the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) lasting from 1995 to 2002. The TRC was to underscore the wrongs and victims of the obnoxious apartheid era on both divides and to effect a healing. South Africa’s TRC was the 19th of such held across the world; with the slight difference that the Cape Town based South Africa’s TRC was the first one to conduct public hearings. Despite some flaws, the exercise was held as a success.

Borrowing from South Africa, Nigeria, under Olusegun Obasanjo set up the Human Rights Violations Investigation Commission, 1999.
“The Commission was mandated to identify the perpetrators of human rights violations and to recommend accountability measures and means of preventing future abuses. The original mandate asked the Commission to gather information about four military regimes that ruled Nigeria from 1984 to 1999. However, the temporal scope of the Commission was later extended back to 1966; the year of Nigeria's first military coup after the country had gained independence from the United Kingdom.” -Harvard University.
According to the United States Institute for Peace, the commission submitted its report to Obasanjo in June 2002, but the report was never released officially to the public. However, a Washington-based NGO known as Nigerian Democratic Movement and Nigeria-based Civil Society Forum acted on their own accord to publish the full report to the public. The report found amongst other things, the military responsible for gross human rights violations, in collaboration with some rich civilians. One of the recommendations was a compensation for victims of human rights abuses. As usual, the Nigerian government never blinked. Neither the military nor the culpable rich civilians were censured by the government. No apologies were rendered to victims and descendants of human rights abuses, and no compensations paid. Instead, Obasanjo sent the army again on murderous rampage in Odi and Zaki Ibiam. Very typical!

Now, with the acceptance by the President, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan that a Sovereign National Conference is a road map to a fresh start, one wonders if his government would be prepared to break the jinx of dishonesty and lack of faith which those who had mimed leadership roles in Nigeria were known for. Nigeria is still plagued by a post-war winner dementia propounded by those who tricked their way into power by pretending to love Nigeria and fighting for her unity, and have sustained misrule to date, by rewarding their conspiracy since 1966. It beats logic that a bunch of self-acclaimed patriots would fight for the love of a country and end up feasting on its misery. As we can see, Nigeria is remotely and directly ruled by the War victors whose vested interest has created so much mess that needs thorough cleaning up.

Interestingly, the colonial Governor-General of Nigeria between 1920–31, Sir Hugh Clifford, described Nigeria as “a collection of independent Native States, separated from one another by great distances, by differences of history and traditions and by ethnological, racial, tribal, political, social and religious barriers.”  (Nigeria Council Debate, Lagos, 1920). [Open Mind Foundation].

All over the world, self-determination is the prerogative of every people, and their will is respected. Nigeria’s Sovereign National Conference must not be programmed, pre-empted, and delegates must not be selected by the government. Every possibility must be on the table. Passionate groups should be allowed to participate in the conference. There must not be a no-go area; else it’s no longer sovereign. Sahara Reporters reported about an individual, Dr Femi Okurounmu, a former senator who while speaking on behalf of the federal government had ruled out discussing the break-up of Nigeria during the conference. His reason hinged on:
“Those people who believe in the dismembering of Nigeria are just fringe groups,” he said, referring to some elements in the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), the Odua People’s Congress (OPC), Arewa People’s Congress (APC), Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP) and other groups. “Nobody came to demand that Nigeria should be dismembered,” he said. “The goal of the National Conference is greater justice and greater equity.” – Sahara Reporters

If that line of thought is the basis for the conference, it means that the outcome of the conference has already been decided before the conference kicks off, thereby sealing its fate as another futile exercise in the league of successive Nigerian governments’ window dressing. It becomes like Obasanjo-era elections where the outcomes were determined, and candidates assumed the positions they were vying for before even the votes were cast. In a country where numerous organized groups as Okurounmu highlighted are asking for self-determination in form of separation, it raises curiosity as to why he thought that those groups are fringe, especially being that the groups command large followings in their respective regions in Nigeria. How do you determine what is fringe? Is it not by testing its popularity, either via referendum or plebiscite? Why would they be so afraid of the so-called fringe groups to the extent of denying them a say in determining their own future? How fringe are the fringe groups? The smartest approach would be to allow each group a say, and when their region and people eventually reject their stand through a referendum, that would by implication strengthen One-Nigeria. This is the only way to give either a legal backing or rejection to Lord Frederick Lugard’s 1914 adventure in the Niger area.

Nigeria has become synonymous with a promise not kept. President Jonathan should distance himself from the hypocrisy of his authoritarian predecessors, and their foot soldiers. He was given a strong mandate by the people to lead. At this crucial point in history, he has to trust that the same people whose mandate he has are itching for their voice to be heard, not the voice of the clique. Failure to make a wise judgment would reduce the SNC to another jamboree, a waste of resources and a waste of precious time. That’s sure to worsen the state of the nation.






References:
Charles Kumolu. (2011) How Maitasine raised curtians for militancy, available at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2011/06/how-maitasine-raised-curtians-for-mil..., accessed 25 October 2013.
Harvard University, Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research, Human Rights Violations Investigation Commission (also known as the "Oputa Panel") (Nigeria) (1999 - 2002), available at: http://www.hpcrresearch.org/mrf-database/mission.php?id=91, accessed on 26 October 2013.
Open Mind Foundation, Understanding the Sovereign National Conference (SNC), available at: http://www.openmindfoundation.com/index.php/understanding-the-sovereign-..., accessed on 26 October 2013.
The UNHCR, (2013) The UN Refugee Agency, Ref World, Chronology for Ibo in Nigeria, available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/469f38c3467.html, accessed on 25 October 2013.
Sahara Reporters, National Confab: Why We Won’t Discuss Breaking Up Nigeria by Senator Femi Okurounmu, available at: http://saharareporters.com/video/national-confab-why-we-won%E2%80%99t-di..., accessed on 27 October 2013.
United States Institute of Peace, Truth Commission: Nigeria, Human Rights Violations Investigation Commission (later called The Judicial Commission for the Investigation of Human Rights Violations), available at: http://www.usip.org/publications/truth-commission-nigeria, accessed on 26 October 2013.
United States Institute of Peace, Truth Commission: South Africa, available at: http://www.usip.org/publications/truth-commission-south-africa, accessed on 26 October 2013.
Vanguard, (2010) Not Just Jos, available at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2010/01/not-just-jos/, accessed on 25 October 2013.
Wikipedia, Truth and Reconciliation Commission (South Africa), available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_and_Reconciliation_Commission_%28Sout..., accessed on 26 October 2013.