We note the decision of President Jonathan to send the
outcome of the resolutions of the proposed national conference to the national
assembly for ratification. The idea of a national conference came to being
because of the imperfections of the current legislative arrangements that our
legislative institution does not absolutely represent the will of the people.
If it was otherwise, a separate body to discuss the will of the people outside
the official legislature would not have been necessary. Political exclusion mechanisms
in the electoral system through electorate poverty and the use of money to buy
votes, poor internal party democracy, thuggery and violence and high cost of
political party finance exclude a large portion of society from expressing their
will in candidates and the political party of their choice. These political
exclusion mechanisms largely limit the playing field to corrupt and overpaid
politicians ensuring that we elect into parliament not those we want or trust
that will represent our will but those that we are forced to choose from in an
electoral pack that may not necessarily represent the breadth of our will.
The political parties, hence our so called elected
representatives tend not to be fundamentally different. The opposition parties are
as guilty of poor internal party democracy as the ruling party. The opposition parties in parliament are also
as un-transparent in their compensation and allowances as the ruling party. We
have not seen any clear non-mainstream legislative agenda from opposition
parties or a different legislative behavior that suggests that may have been scioned
from a different block. The difference between the ruling political party and
the opposition is largely a difference of blue-black and black –blue. Hence, if
President Jonathan sends the debate of the national conference for ratification
to a legislative institution that only marginally represent the will of the
people, how valid for the purpose of creation of a new political arrangement
that the people will own, will such legislative ratification be? There are even fundamental questions about
the nature of the federal parliament that has skewed its seats largely in
favour of some regions ensuring that when the parliament votes and the legislators
close ranks on the basis of their regions and nationalities, the outcome is
largely predictable. Hence, the structure of parliament itself, the political
arrangement inherited from the British and the military that skewed local
government numbers and legislative representation disproportionately in favour
of some states and regions would itself be a subject of debate in a national
conference. How could a parliament whose structure and composition is in
question for fair representation fairly ratify the decision of a conference of
the people?
The will of the politicians or the political elites is not
necessarily the will of the people. The will of the Northern political elite is
not necessarily the will of the Northern people. If so, the privileges that the
North elites have had in governance and government more than any other region
in the last five decades should have translated to the lifting of our Northern
brothers out of poverty. Yet the North remains more underdeveloped than other
regions. People do not eat politics.
They want food, shelter, clothing, water, heath, education and good quality of
life. Experience in our politics have shown that there is no necessary correlation
between having your “son” in government and a guarantee of the improvement in
the quality of life of the people. The same applies to the West where the
politicians and the political elites are largely concerned about winning
elections, running politics like an investment in which they sell their
properties, raise cash to buy votes from our impoverished people and make the
money back in over-inflated contracts and political rents when they get to
government. The same applies in the
South –South. Despite massive federal allocations, we are yet to see a
commensurate lifting of our South –South brothers out of poverty with the
exceptions of projects whose primary purpose seem to be a channel for
self-enrichment of our South-South political elites rather than their people.
We discuss the above to show that the parliament today as largely
dominated by our current political elite, do not necessarily represent the will
of “we the people”. It at best only does so marginally. It cannot therefore genuinely
be the organ to ratify the outcome of a national conference. It is a waste of time to have a national
conference and get its resolution ratified by an institution that at best
marginally represents the will of the people. We went through such time-wasting
exercise before. The good recommendations of the Justice Uwais panel report on
electoral reform to strengthen our democratic institution prescribing that the
National Judicial Council nominates the INEC Chairman rather than a President
with political interest has been ignored by parliament. The recommendation to
set up electoral offences tribunal and prescription of severe jail terms for
those who rig elections by the Uwais panel has also been ignored by parliament.
These are the wishes and the will of the people. The will of the people that
the parliament becomes transparent about is compensation and allowances and
declare it publicly has also been ignored by the legislature that should carry
out the will of “we the people”.
The principle of legislative sovereignty in a representative
democracy is based on the moral argument that “we the people” who are the
ultimate sovereign transfer our sovereignty to a body of our elected
representatives who must act or legislate in our interest. If political exclusion
mechanisms limit our choices of who should represent us, delinks the parliament
from the interest of the people and such elected representative body only
marginally and not absolutely act in the interest of “we the people”, such
legislative body on such sensitive issue as a national conference should not
have absolute legislative sovereignty to ratify the decisions of a conference
of “we the people”.
We therefore submit that if we must have a national
conference, and it would not be a waste of our time, its decisions must be
ratified not by parliament but by a referendum of the people. We support the
views other patriots who have championed this position including the former NBA
President, Olisa Agbakoba. The national conference must be sovereign or its sovereignty
and its decisions ratified only by a people’s referendum. If not, we would be having
a talk-shop to discuss all that we heard before, for which we had no structure
to resolve due to the weakness of our democratic and legislative institutions.
