The National Coordinator of the Oodua Peoples Congress and a delegate representing the South-West at the National Conference, Gani Adams, speaks with OLUSOLA FABIYI on the achievements recorded at the confab and other national issues.
As a delegate representing the South-West, what is your mandate?
We came to the conference to canvass for true federalism. We are here to say that power must be devolved to the states and the local governments from the centre. Our first plan is that power must be devolved to the region and from the regions to the states.
You seem to have lost that.
We realised that more than 50 per cent of the delegates were against regionalism. Secondly, they also did not buy into the idea of parliamentary system of government. When we consulted, we realised that the North-East, about 70 per cent of the delegates, believed in regionalism but didn’t want parliamentary system of government. In the Niger Delta, the Ijaws and some other tribes, and Mid-West, believe in regionalism but they do not believe in parliamentary system of government. We had to harmonise our interests. We also reached out to the people in the South-South and Middle Belt by saying that if we all could not agree on regionalism, let power devolve to the states and let us have a modified presidential system of government, which would incorporate presidential and parliamentary system. That was what we agreed on.
What are you going to tell your people that you achieved at the conference?
We have state police; we got the argument that Supreme Court should be in every state of the country. We also have the approval that each state should write its constitution apart from that of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. These will strengthen our democracy.
If each state writes its own constitution, will it not aid those wishing to secede?
We must not have the mind that Nigerians want to walk away from this country. The reason we are having agitation for Biafra, agitation from the Niger Delta region, that we are having Oodua Peoples Congress as an organisation, is because our structure has been lopsided. There is a lot of injustice everywhere. Many organsiations therefore sprang up to make sure that there was justice and equity. With the recommendations we have made and agreeing to a reasonable percentage of derivation to the people of Niger Delta, I don’t think any organisation or group will be agitating to leave the country. This is because we have also given fair hearing to all nationalities.
Members of the Boko Haram sect are also making their demands…
What is it? They said they wanted an Islamic state. They want their own religion. If they say they want their own religion, the state they belong to can agree on whether to adopt Islamic constitution or not. This will douse the tension of Boko Haram instead of using our commonwealth, our resources to fight them with arms and ammunition. We can easily jaw-jaw instead of war-war to solve Nigeria’s problems.
Some members of Boko Haram have been arrested in the Southern part of the country. Is this not a bad sign?
If we don’t solve Nigeria’s problems through restructuring, it will be difficult to stop members of Boko Haram sect from infiltrating the southern part of the country. These are people fighting a guerrilla war. This war, all over the world, is always difficult to stop. America, with its network and security, failed to stop the 9/11 bombing. Even in Britain, there was a bomb blast. In Russia, it is the same. In Ukraine, terroism is there. Look at what is happening in Kenya, which is a tourist haven.
Is restructuring the solution to the insurgency?
When you are talking about infiltrating the southern part of the country, if we don’t solve the problem of restructuring, if we don’t allow self-determination to be enshrined in our constitution, it will be very difficult to stop Boko Haram. No amount of security network in different parts of the world would solve it. We can solve it with ideology, not by military force. That is one of the ten reasons we are sitting here. Not by the commander-in-chief wearing army uniform or posting military administrators to the states as governors who will proscribe some organisations or roll out laws that will favour some sections of this country. We are here to discuss the problems of the country. We have agreed on 18 states in addition to the 36 states on the ground. That is commendable.
No comments:
Post a Comment