National Confab too close to 2015 elections – Bakare

Convener of Save Nigeria Group (SNG), Tunde Bakare, has warned that the proposed National Conference is ill advised because of its closeness to the 2015 general elections.

He said going ahead with the confab would amount placing the cart before the horse.

The conference, he added, must therefore be jettisoned.

Bakare made the observations on Wednesday at the 10th Chief Gani Fawehinmi Annual Lecture/Symposium organised by the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Ikeja branch, under the theme, ‘Nigeria at Centenary: A Nation still in Bondage?’

While bemoaning the rot in the entire Nigerian system, he lamented that past leaders have kept Nigerians in total bondage for years and that the country is yet to attain some measure of freedom even with the coming of democracy in 1999.

He singled out former President Olusegun Obasanjo, whom he accused of raising the mountain of corruption to an unimaginable peak despite the golden opportunity presented to him to liberate the country after his ascension to the highest office in the land.

“Genuine liberty was not attained in 1999. Not with a culture of corruption, impunity and sectional interest that pervades every sector and every level of the social cadre; not with pseudo-federal structure that constrains the birth and development of true nationhood and the capacity of the constituents to develop at their respective paces; not with institutions that serve the interest of a privileged few who have cornered the resources of our country.

“Not with a Constitution that was forced on the people by the military and which gives fundamental human rights with one hand and takes them away with the other.

“Not with a judiciary that will set free perpetrators of multi-billion naira theft and send pepper and onion thieves to jail; not with legislatures that consume the greater percentage of the country’s recurrent expenditure, making laws that have no bearing on the welfare of the people and defending positions like child marriage that perpetuate socio- economic bondage,” Bakare, who was running mate to Presidential candidate of the defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), Muhammadu Buhari, in 2011, said.

According to him, the way forward out of the current national quagmire is for Nigerians to take full advantage of the opportunity the National Conference presents to restructure and rebuild the nation.

“To move forward from this national quagmire, we must go back in order to go forward and we must approach the task on all fronts.

“First, we must move out of the cesspool in which the young Nigerian nation was dumped with the bath water on the 24th of May 1966. We must reach out for her, retrieve what is left of her, wash her clean and nurture her back to life.

“That is why we welcome the idea of a constitutional conference and insist that the modalities must be genuinely people-driven,” he said.

Earlier in his remark, former President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Ayo Isa Salami, who chaired the occasion, extolled the virtues of the late Fawehinmi and encouraged lawyers present not to allow his labour to be in vain.

He also warned the Nigerian elite to come together and reason if they want Nigeria to be saved from impending doom.

“Gani gave voice to the voiceless. There is no gainsaying the fact. His struggles for fundamental human rights will not be in vain. Nigerians do not want the truth to be told. Whoever wants to tell the truth is always marked for destruction.

“If Gani were alive and in charge. He would not have allowed the matter to be swept under the carpet,” the retired judge said.

Meanwhile, Ikeja branch of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) has berated the role so far played by President Goodluck Jonathan in the controversial acquisition of two armoured BMW cars by Minister of Aviation, Stella Oduah.

In a statement by its Chairman, Monday Ubani, the NBA described Oduah’s case as a clear breach of extant laws and procedures with clear intentions of corrupt enrichment.

“The expectation of the majority of the citizenry was that the President will hand over the Minister of Aviation to the appropriate security agencies for proper investigation and if found culpable, be properly prosecuted.

“The President, known for setting up committees virtually in all matters but whose recommendations are never implemented, once again took the road everyone guessed he will take.

“Expectedly, a three-man committee was set up with a timeline. The committee’s work has since been completed and submitted to the President, and up till now, their findings and recommendations as usual must have been thrown into the dustbin.

“The House of Representatives that took the bold step to recommend the sack of the minister after its findings that the minister was indeed culpable has been treated with contempt and their recommendation jested at by the said minister and officials at the Presidency and Aviation Ministry,” the association lamented.