By Rotimi Ajayi
Posted to the Web: Friday, December 30, 2005

The gathering at Enugu State House of Assembly radiated seriousness. There was seriousness in the way the delegates greeted themselves at the lobby of the historic  Enugu Parliament building. There was seriousness in the manner of organization of the event there and there was seriousness in the arrangement of vehicular traffic to  the imposing building sitting atop a hill bearing down on the exquisite Opara Square and the unique International Conference Centre being built by the State  Government. Indeed the event, the Summit of the South East, South South and South West political leaders paled every other activity in the coal city. And in the  whole Country for that week.

The Summit Chief organiser, Chimaroke Nnamani, a man who appears to have inextinguishable energy was on hand to receive every notable leader invited for the  event which the politicians concerned hoped would be a final panacea to the political power diatribe that has divided the country on North South basis. The precursor  to the Summit was the serial held by politicians from the Northern part of the country especially those who are so peeved with the reform agenda being undertaken by  the President administration and would perhaps want a reversal of the situation  to the pre-1999 days. These politicians had prodded their heirs to organize one  meeting after the other to denounce the government and make demands that come 2007, the Presidency should be  returned to the North.

According to one of the forerunners of these return-“power”-to-the-North campaign, the leader of the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD), the  North is legitimately the rightful place to produce the President for the country come 2007. The argument of course was strengthened by the former Speaker of the  House of Representatives, Alhaji Ghali Na`abba, who intoned in Abuja recently that retaining power in the southern part of the country would be an infraction of the  agreement reached with President Olusegun Obasanjo in Aso Rock at the beginning of his administration. This agreement was said to have been to the effect that the  North would produce the President in 2007. It was on basis that the Northern legislators forum was formed in the National Assembly under the leadership of the  Plateau State born Victor Lar. The Forum was  launched with fanfare in Abuja late November and days after the Northern Governors met in Kaduna to take a  position on the  issue and the speculation that President Obasanjo is seeking a third term in office. Coming out of their meeting, the governors unequivocally  demanded that the Presidency should return to the North in 2007.

The North in pushing its demand of course resorted to developing a plot to stop the amendment work being carried out on the 1999 constitution so that inadvertently  the region would not be schemed out of its goal. The ardent argument of the Conservative Northern politicians eventually led to the Enugu Summit.

In his opening address to the mammoth gathering, Governor Nnamani went down memory lane to tell delegates that prior to the birth of  Nigeria, sovereign nations  had existed and were doing well until their progress was forcefully truncated by the forced amalgamation exercise carried out by the United Kingdom leading to the  formation of colonial Nigeria.
The result according to him was that the problems created by the fusion, the problem of the national question was yet to be resolved and the only way it can be  resolved is for the various component nationalities in the country to continue to debate and dialogue. This debate is the fulcrum  which planners of the Enugu Summit  envisaged when the delegates gathered there so that Nigeria in 20 years time could be made virile and whole unlike the jaundiced state of health in the country at the  moment.

After the host Governor had set the Summit in motion, speaker rose upon speaker pontificate on why the South should get its acts together as one body which can  handle the impending challenges being thrown up in Nigeria. The Summit delegates were of the opinion that there were some basic fundamentals that must be included  in Nigerian Constitution, which can guarantee justice and equity for all nationalities and zones in the country.

These issues according to them revolve around establishment of a truly fiscal federation. These were made manifest in the agenda of the meeting itself which listed  Revenue Allocation/Resource of South\ East Control and the leadership question( the need for the Presidency to rotate to the South South zone.

Other items on the agenda were the request for State creation from the South East part of the country and the conduct of census in a very transparent manner that will  reflect the tribe and religious profile of the country. The Summit resolved that continuation of the amendment work to the 1999 Constitution would do Nigeria a lot of  good unlike the views being held by the Northern politicians. Indeed Resolution Four of the Summit states clearly , “that the process of Constitutional  Amendment/Reform must commence immediately and be concluded and effected prior to the 2007 elections, failing which the South shall boycott the 2007 elections  and consider the reconstitution of the country as confederation on the basis of six-geopolitical zones, with each zone retaining its resources and contributing to the  centre on the basis of an agreed principle, failure of which the South shall stop forthwith resources derived from its geopolitical zone.”

As hard as the resolutions at the Southern summit may look like, the leaders who assembled in Enugu were still of the opinion that the North and the South must  engage in dialogue to evolve a better Nigeria. According to Chief Olu Falae, former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Nigeria would be better off if the  Northern conservatives drop their hard stand that they would push for the blockade of the constitutional amendment work. He said, “if the Northerners should block  the amendment to the constitution then there will be a stalemate and when there is a stalemate then there will be need for negotiation. It is those who refuse change  who precipitate crisis. If some people want to cause crisis there is nothing you can do about it but once they cause it you have to resolve it and resolving the crisis  means negotiation. And if some people have said they will cause any crisis then there will be a call for confederation. This is one way of saying let’s go to the  conference and resolve the issues. The reason for all these meetings is that there must be negotiation. There must be negotiation on all the issues.”

In his own comment, a member of the PDP Board of Trustees believed that the position of the South Summit should be seen as anything novel in the country.  According to him, the issues canvassed at the summit had been with Nigerians for a while. He noted that the resolution would ensure their being disposed off to the  benefit of Nigerians. He said, “I don’t think there is anything novel in what is being agitated for today. It has been on for quite a while. If you recall the clamour for a  Sovereign National Conference cutting across ethnic Religious boundary lines shows the existence of the problem. Secondly, the agreement or the understanding  within the PDP is just an understanding within a party. However, the summit here cut across party lines and as such you have PDP, ANPPP and almost all the  political parties are in there. So whatever understanding or arrangement a political party has would appear not to be binding on the rest of the political parties. I was a  bit reserved coming to this conference but I think it  has been quite an interesting position that I have been hearing. People are talking about equity, fairness and the  rest of it.

“This conference is asking that some of the fundamental assumptions in the country should be revalidated. Census is one of the issues. If you talk about the North  being larger in number, you are talking on what basis? You are talking about the census which has been challenged to be flawed in a number of ways. Let me say that  if we all have the interest of this nation at heart, we are talking about the unity of this country and when we are talking about the unity of this country we are talking  about certain fundamental principles.” The Deputy National Chairman (South) of the PDP Chief Olabode George saw the summit in Enugu as the backlash of the  cynical stand of the conservative few Northern politicians seeking for Presidential position. According to him, by their action they had triggered a process that cannot  be reversed again.

“When it all started, I was praying hard that we should not reinvent the wheel. We should not get over to North/South dialogue but for God, you could see those who  animated it. It was a very small group that were agitating for the ambition of an individual.

Now they want to set this  country back so many years and this a warning we cannot afford. I pray that Almighty God will touch the mind of the real leaders,  the leaders in the North to call them to order. Now they have opened a can of worms. Things that are being managed, not to destabilise this nation they brought it out  of their blighted ambition into the fore. While they thought that they were nurturing and posturing their personal ambition over the corporate ambition of this country,  now things that have never been discussed before, the unity across the Niger, has now been born today.

“The history of this nation would never be the same again. Those issues that have been swept under the carpet will now be brought to the fore and I know that there  are leaders, sincere, committed, honest leaders in the north, let them call these few ambitious blighted people to order and let resolve these things in a very amicable  manner. I pray that those leaders should come out now and start to temporize otherwise……”

Senator Remi Okunrinboye described the efforts of the Southern politicians at forming a united front, as a good one for the people of the southern part of the country.  He said “I want to say that what has happened today is a good beginning for the people of the southern part of Nigeria. There is certainty that this would enable  Nigeria to remain a united nation when you have that sort of solidarity. So it is not out of place that these demands are being made.”

In a powerful statement, which guided the direction of discussion at the summit, Chief Tony Anenih, who spoke in personal capacity reminded the gathering of the  necessity of the assignment. According to him, the history of the country should be corrected following age long distortion brought about by various political  machinations.

He said, that the south share much in common and has the ability to liberate itself. His words,“When we factor the massive similarities in the culture of the people of  the three zones are considered, the obvious conclusion is that the Southern part of this country is a natural entity and not an artificial creation. Therefore there is a  natural mandate for us to work together and forge common strategies for productive co-existence in Nigeria.

“Unfortunately, in the 45 years of Nigeria’s independence, the three zones have not taken advantage of their natural affinities to work together for their common good.  More critically, the zones have been susceptible to the divide and rule tactics of others. Our leaders have often made themselves willing tools in the hands of  hegemonic forces with grave consequences for our common interests, stability and socio-economic development.

“Can we forget that our zones have been the theatre of violent political crises, colossal loss of lives in military coups de tat and devastating civil war? Or do we want  to forget that for almost 40 years of our national life, we were the victims of power domination? Or can we ever forget that we have consistently been victims of  public policy manipulations, which have left us grossly disadvantaged in the political economy of the country?
“We know for sure that the south is the life-blood of the Nigerian economy and a major reservoir of the nation’'s human capacity. If, over the years, the political  leadership had originated from the same area as the economic base, the trajectory and story of our development would have been different and surely more positive”.

Much as the leaders of the South did not foreclose dialogue on the political situation in the country, Enugu State Governor Chimaroke Nnamani, at a rapport with  newsmen in the Government House, vividly explained the irreducible minimum for the South.  He stated that the issues of having a good scientific data of the  population of the country is one while issues fiscal federalism is another.

The governor pointed out that those who felt that presidency is the main issue why the South summit held missed the ball by wide margin. According to him, the issue  of who becomes the President is personal but what is germane is the need for the institutional reforms that would guarantee equity, justice and fairplay. He highlighted  this by pointing out that if the Presidency had been the real issue, areas, which had held such office for over 30 of the 45 years of Nigeria independence, should have  greatly improved. He is logically right.

Now that the die is cast, the power play will start in earnest between the two regions. A group of Northern Senators has already dismissed the efforts of the South as  laughable. According to them, what is important to the North is the presidency, which they said the North will clinch by its sheer numbers if not zoned to any area. It  is interesting that these Senators missed the point as pointed out by Governor Nnamani.

 How do they know that the North as factored by them would remain the monolithic north of Ahmadu Bello? Certain areas of the north have certainly complained to  have suffered more under the northern power hold than it is at the moment. This sub sector of the North such as Kogi, Kwara, Plateau may not be easy meat for the  core north to count on.

As Senator Okunriboye pointed out, there is still a lot of work to do in consolidating the new found unity of the South.  The setting up of steering committee to  oversee the implementation of the resolutions at the summit may just be the first right step taken by the South to hit the bull’s eyes. Time will tell who blinks first  between the North and the South.