The National Assembly in Nigeria has been asked to consider whether the agreements reached at the end of the proposed national conference will be subjected to a referendum or not.
Mr Bola Bakare of the Truth Be Told Network, on Friday, stressed that the decisions reached at the conference would lack legal backing if the National Assembly failed to consider the needed legal backing prior to the end of the conference.
“The National Assembly has not giving us go ahead about what we have to do.
“They need to tell us to go ahead with the conference and specify whether we can have a referendum afterwards or tell us to go ahead with the conference and turn decisions reached back to them to make them laws. We have a challenge if they do not do that. The legal options are what we should look at.
“For some time now the National Assembly has not been considered. They should be put in the front burner.
“If we are going to get anything good out of the discussion, let the National Assembly decide that now because the agreement cannot be subjected to a referendum if the National Assembly did not give a legal backing for that to happen. I challenge them, if they are true Nigerians, let a member of the National Assembly raise a motion seeking that the decisions should be subjected to a referendum now and let them hold debates on it and make it a by-law before the conference,” he said.
Mr Bakare also pointed out that the modalities of the conference read out by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Mr Ayim Pius Ayim, showed that few aspects of the 4,000-page report submitted to President Goodluck Jonathan by the Presidential Advisory Committee on National Conference were captured.
“We do not know what is in the 4,000 pages of the document that was given to the president.
“When Senator Femi Okurounmu finished, he gave the president a 4,000-page package. The guidelines we have are just one page or two. What does he have in the 4,000 pages? What that means is that they have already deliberated on the 4,000-page document and have come out with the modalities.
“We need the executive summary of the document submitted to the president,” he demanded.
Discussion Of National Unity
According to him, the clamour for a national conference has moved two steps.
“First, is that the agitations of majority of Nigerians have been listened to. The second is that the people have been partially satisfied. The guidelines speak the minds of 80 per cent of Nigerians if not all,” Mr Bakare stated.
He supported Mr Ayim’s comment that the issue on whether the country should be divided or not was a no go area, saying that “if it was allowed, it would become the number one topic of the conference”.
He, however, explained that Nigerians were agitating for the discussion of national unity, because the nation had failed Nigerians.
“As a normal human being with the tenets of social engineering, if the whole nation does not favour you, you move back to your state, if the state does not favour you, you move back to your local government.
“If we can make Nigerians feel better, not just at the home level, but at Local government level, State Level and Nigeria as a whole, there will not be need for discussion of national unity. Those are the baseline factors that must be looked at,” he insisted.
The leader of the Truth Be Told Network also suggested that the consideration of the decisions reached in the conference should be deferred till after the 2015 elections, insisting that the polity is already heated up with political activities.