The National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) on Thursday condemned ‘the persisting unconscionable killings of Nigerians in certain areas in the northern parts of the country’ and urged President Goodluck Jonathan to immediately convene a Sovereign National Conference.

The Leaders of the pro-democracy group at a press conference in Lagos also insisted that the country must restore the true federal foundations upon which it was established and that failing to do so may result in a ‘disorderly and probably violent exit of entrapped ethnic nationalities from the Nigerian union.’

Part of the text of the press conference which was signed by Rear Admiral G. N. Kanu; Chief Ayo Adebanjo; and Fred Agbeyegbe reads: ‘NADECO calls on President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan and his governmental team, Executive-Legislative-Judiciary, to urgently embrace the much-advocated and indeed inevitable Sovereign National Conference (SNC).‘ The group insisted that the SNC must be convened in the first half of 2012.

The group further faulted the Nigerian constitution insisting that the regional government that existed prior to 1966 which was halted by military coup is the best for a country with multiple ethnic groups like Nigeria.

The group suggested that to end the unrest and insecurity in the country, Nigerians can either renegotiate “a new basis of our continued corporate coexistence as a Nation
or negotiate a peaceful dissolution of the Nigerian State as was the case with the USSR, Ethiopia and Czechoslovakia.”

The group invited all ethnic nationalities in the country to ‘intensify their respective constitution-making processes in formations of their choice including conducting referendum in their respective areas and blocs in readiness for the inevitable final resolution (by the only way that will be peaceful) of the long standing National Question. ‘