National Conference: Agbakoba Opposes ‘No-go’ Areas

Olisa Agbakoba, SAN

• Mark explains position

Ademola Adeyemo and Omololu Ogunmade
Former President of the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA), Mr. Olisa Agbakoba (SAN), Tuesday  disagreed with the Senate President, Senator David Mark, over his suggestion that the proposed national conference should leave some national  issues undiscussed.

Mark had while addressing members of the senate on the need for Nigeria to hold a national conference over vital national issues suggested that the sitting should avoid deliberation on some issues, which he described as “sensitive”.

But Agbakoba in a letter addressed to the Senate President stated that the civil society in the country had always insisted that Nigerians would  have to authenticate, legitimise and endorse a constitution to govern their affairs.

According to him, “Civil Society in Nigeria has noted with mixed reaction your statement to Distinguished Senators, on the floor of the senate chamber, that a national conference is a vital requirement for a peoples’ constitution for this country. Although, many within the civil society disagree or have expressed reservations about the so called

“NO-GO” issues highlighted in your statement, it is commonly agreed that your declaration forms an important new development in the quest for a legitimate Peoples' Constitution”.

Agbakoba  stated that rather than cripple the assembly, “Nigeria will benefit from a robust full discussion on two vital questions asked by Late Bola Ige, when he said: “There are 2 basic questions that must be answered by all of us Nigerians. One, do we want to remain as one country? Two, if the answer is yes, under what conditions? I respectfully suggest that Bola Ige’s questions are well framed as the National Questions we need to examine if we are to build a new spirit of commitment to Nation and service to Motherland.”

Alluding to the challenges of logistics in holding a national conference, Agbakoba argued that the challenges are not insurmountable saying that every stakeholder must develop the spirit of give and take.
According to him, “A possible platform for a National Conference will be set by President Goodluck Jonathan convoking it and declaring it’s resolutions binding and subject only to a referendum. This will give the conference confidence and integrity and compensate for matters related to the non sovereign status of the conference.”

However, Agbakoba suggested that the review of past conference resolutions should form part of the Terms of Reference of the proposed conference while the it should also consider the structure of the federation and massive devolution of powers.

He said: “It is of vital importance that the nature of our political arrangements are first discussed. The conference’s task is not simply the drawing up of a constitution. For Nigeria, we should discuss political arrangements first, then constitutionalise it by a legal document, that is the constitution”

Agbakoba  submitted that in drawing a good constitution for Nigeria, it should contain four vital elements which include that: everybody must talk and authority by accepting that either the president or National Assembly will be the convening authority.
Other ingredients according to him are validity and legitimacy “We the people, shall validate the constitution, by referendum, no one else. Our democracy can only be secured and deepened by a legitimate constitution.”

Meanwhile, Senate spokesman, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, yesterday explained why Mark opposed the call for the convocation of  Sovereign National Conference (SNC) and opted for national conference, saying the entire democratic structures have to be altered if SNC would be convened.

Abaribe told journalists in Abuja yesterday, that Mark decided to change his earlier stance against the convocation of a national conference, because he had a different perception about events in the country now and believes that dialogue could help solve the problem.

According to him, the hallmark of a statesman is flexibility as against rigidity, insisting that Mark found that recent events in the polity called for a change of mind and, therefore, opted to toe that path instead of holding on to his earlier position even when it defied reason.

His words: "Let me say that the hallmark of a statesman is not to continue saying because you have said so and when you have a better information and when circumstances on the ground have changed, you should not be able to change your mind.

"The caveat he put there is that there is absolutely no way you can say that you are having a sovereign conference because, in a sovereign conference, the connotation is different and the connotation of having a sovereign conference means that it will be sovereign which means also that you have to do away with the existing structures and that will not be in anybody’s interest.

"If people think that there is something that is wrong and there is need to talk about it, I don’t think that there is reason that we should not talk about it."

On allegation of moves to change the senate leadership, he said: "Let me say that all members of the seventh senate continue to have explicit confidence in the leadership of the seventh Senate. Whatever is going to lead to any other thing will come also from inside the Senate and I do not think that there is anything that would warrant any loss of confidence in the leadership."