MIKE Ozekhome, legal practitioner and human rights activist, has faulted President Muhammadu Buhari’s non-implementation of the over 260 recommendations of the 2014 National Conference, blaming it for the lingering problems in the country.
Ozekhome spoke at the First Edo Heroes and Heroines Lecture Series organised by Edo Forum of Patriots in Benin City over the weekend.
He said that he was highly disappointed that since the end of the National Conference in which notable Nigerians selected from various parts of the country discussed the issues bothering on the state of the nation, no part of the recommendations had been implemented.
Ozekhome said, “I am greatly disappointed that the recommendations have not been implemented and for as long as we continue to overlook the recommendations in that confab reports, for so long we are going to have our problems, because we have over 260 recommendations that can redo and re-engineer a country that is in need of vision of mission. President Buhari has not done himself any good by saying he has not even read it and that he will not even read it, that N9 billion was wasted on it.
“That is the more reason he should look at it.
That confab was made up of the best first eleven elements of Nigeria from all the six geopolitical zones; all the thirty-six states; all the seven hundred and seventy-four local governments areas; Emirs, traditional rulers, professionals, senior advocates of Nigeria, medical doctors, retired police officers, military officers, the physically challenged, the youths and the women. Every segment of the Nigerian society was reflected at that confab.
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“And we disagreed on many occasions but we still agreed to agree before we finally arrived at those over two hundred recommendations and you are telling me that you do not want to implement them. That is why we still have the problem; for what he is looking for in London, is under his trousers and that is the truth,” Ozekhome said.
The human rights activist further noted that there was need for the country to practice true federalism so that the people from the different parts of the state and ethnic groups could feel the significant impact of whatever is produced or generated in their locality rather than being marginalised.
He said that the country’s federal system was lopsided of which he said was part of the reason Nigeria as a country was suffering.
“The point I am making is that the federalism we are operating now is a lopsided one. It is tilted in favour of the big ethnic groups, particularly the Igbo, Hausa, Yoruba, and the Fulanis. And I asked the question, ‘what about the three hundred and seventy ethnic groups?’ Are you now continuing to use the tripod of Igbo, Hausa, Yoruba, Fulani? A tripod is not a balanced object. I think that is why Nigeria continues to wobble and fumble.
“We need to have a truly balanced federalism restructured in such a way that each state should be able to take care and manage its own resources with its own constitution, its own police force. If you want one hundred local government areas, good luck; if you want to shrink your own local government, for example Edo wants to shrink eighteen local government areas to five to manage, good luck. In other words, local government should not be a factor for the derivation of our national revenue,” he insisted. WHAT A SHAME!!!
