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PRESS RELEASE BY THE COUNCIL OF THE NIGERIAN ECONOMIC SOCEITY
[NES]
OPENING GLEE OF NATIONAL CONFERENCE
There was a national choir on stand by; a well know artist with his band and dancers had been summoned to grace the occasion; so also were a group of actors to present hurriedly arranged drama sketches. Film clips of the faces of well known past leaders, some of whom were largely responsible for leading us or misleading us to where we are now were all part of the opening ceremony for the National Reform Conference. Quite a handful of our past leaders still no matter the nature of their contributions or magnitude of the destruction they visited on the country by their malfeasance or ineptness, were all decked in their usual flowing robes to grace the occasion with their presence. It was as if we were acknowledging their enormous contributions in the past to what the country is today-a potentially great country seemingly forever groping to find the right path to greatness; a potentially strong united prosperous country still trapped under the worst forms of poverty, both material and of the mind, and gripped with the fear of ever lurking sudden disintegration.
"I thought this was meant to be a serious occasion", complained one of my little nieces who were at home on mid-term break. "What have they turned it into? What was there to call for dancing, entertainment and a play-let"? By the time actors of the drama sketches poured out of nowhere unto the stage my nieces couldn't take it any more. They switched off the TV in total disgust. The problem is that the previous night I had admonished them to take keen interest in the National Conference I told them it would be a major source of information for their Civics classes. More importantly, that it is an important forum where many ills of Nigeria they have often complained about, as being responsible for why most in their generation seem to have lost faith and hope in Nigeria would be discussed and dealt with. They obeyed my injunction only to be disappointed in total disgust that appears not be a serious forum after all, since it was like watching entertaining Sunday night News Line on NTA. If my little nieces felt this way I wondered how I would felt as an adult if I was home to watch the opening ceremony or opening glee on TV. What is wrong with us as a people? Can't we ever be serious with anything? Our capacity to reduce every situation to laughter and revelry is legendry. That is why the outcome of some recent funny survey by the BBC adjudged us to be one of the happiest people on earth, our obvious social political and economic conditions that are less than heartening notwithstanding.
Yes indeed, singing, acting, and various forms of artistic expression, dancing, jesting and merry making inclusive can be effective and serious communication mediums in relevant and appropriate settings if they are well thought out. But certainly this couldn't be true of the form of jesting and dancing that are hurriedly put together to fulfill contracts for staging most of our public ceremonies. We are all familiar with how football has become a major uniting force that enables us to sink out differences, and binds us together as one indivisible nation, perhaps long enough to last the duration of a game. One hopes the opening glee in its trivialization of what otherwise should have been a snappy business-like solemn serious occasion is not symptomatic of what to expect of the proceedings and debates to follow in the next several weeks?
Is this being seen simply as yet another opportunity for the boys to make some cheap money, silence the critics, and quell agitations at least for a while, while we embark on a journey that leads to no where only to end up at the beginning point worse off than when we started? We did not need any play sketches or drama to remind us of the years of social and political engineering under Babangida, that after billions of wasted funds and political gymnastics of A4 formula and all that, led us to nowhere if not deeper into the wilderness. Nor did we need to be reminded of the years of tyranny and misrule under Abacha, who sought to introduce sanity into nation's financial system by virtually running the Central Bank dry of any foreign exchange reserves which he converted to personal wealth. The bulk of the stolen funds may be lost for ever in hidden accounts or appropriated by total strangers. We have for the upward of fifteen years or more had agitations for a national conference in one form or the other. Did we need drama sketches or a choir to remind us as to why one was being convened at last against all odds? We did not need to be reminded of the misadventures of some of our past military rulers and their cronies, who today are living in opulence in our midst, and using their stinking ill-acquired wealth to hold the nation to ransom in their newly found civilian gab under democratic pretense.
Some have spoken of hidden agenda or not, the national conference should not be converted into another instance of our numerous purposeless activities, that are pursued as ends in themselves or at best are meant to serve the purpose of individuals or a handful, who think they are important enough to warrant sacrificing our common destiny and collective wellbeing at the alter of their personal ego and welfare. The blood of millions of Nigerians born and unborn, who out of no choice of theirs have been sentenced to servitude, misery, deprivation poverty and unfulfilled lives, as wasted people in a wasting and wasteful nation, is crying out for redemption if not vengeance. The national conference offers us one major opportunity to redeem ourselves from this needless wasting path, where a majority of our citizens merely exist for the sake of existence without hope, without direction, and sometimes without a purpose other than to hope for a better life in the hereafter.
So much has been said about what the agenda for the national conference should be or not include. Whatever the agenda might be, and no one is expecting this to be a conference that would solve all our problems at one go, can those gathered in Abuja please see this as serious business. A serious business that must give our disillusioned majority of citizens some reason for hope, that they can belong to a country worth living, if not worth dying for. If nothing else comes out of this gathering can our conference participants at least address the issue of who is a citizen of Nigeria; how and where he or she can be assured of full and equal protection under the law like any other citizen? While the issues of resource control, federalism, restructuring and other group interests may loom large in the agenda or shopping list of some of the delegates, the average Nigerian is in dire need of assurance that he or she belongs to a country where he or she can have a sense of belonging as a first class citizen. Where regardless of the part of the country he or she chooses to call home, or hails from, he or she would be entitled to equal right privileges, as well as obligations to contribute to the nation's development. Once we have the means of recognizing and enforcing citizenship rights and obligations, we would learn to put our loyalty to Nigeria before our ethnic, regional, sectional, religious and other loyalties that are the sources of our present group concerns and agitations. We can only build a strong united prosperous country when citizens are freed from the constant fear of being humiliated, dispossessed, and sometimes made to loose their lives as non-indigenes, foreigners, and strangers in the country they call theirs. We need a country whose definition and enforcement of citizenship enables to command the respect, loyalty and patriotism of its citizens no matter where they choose to make their abode within the country and under the law.
Having started with a relaxing and colourful if not bemusing opening ceremony, we hope the delegates can now settle down to some hard work, hard thinking and serious debates on how to free ourselves from some of the numerous shackles that have held us down for too long, as a nation and a people with great potentials that remain to be realized. Let us for once take ourselves and our collective destiny a bit more seriously.
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Professor S.O. Olofin
President, Nigeria Economic Society NES
C/o Economics Department, University of Ibadan, Ibadan
24/2/2005
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