Ambassador Yerima Abdullahi is a delegate to the sixth National Conference and one of those strongly against the lopsidedness in the composition of the conferees. He also opposes insistence by mostly Southern delegates on two third majority as parameter for settling issues debates. The Ambassador feels the North is being marginalized. He spoke with Patrick Andrew. Excerpts….
Are you impressed with the quality of debates so far?
No, I am not. I expect Nigerians to be Nigerians and not parochial Nigerians. Mr. President when he inaugurated the conference urged us to look at Nigeria and make sure Nigeria remains a united virile nation.
But as soon as we started talking particularly what happened yesterday, did you notice it? It was a shame. It was very clear that people have come here with preconceived ideas that they want to pursue things which are not entirely in the interest of Nigeria, may be in their own local, in their parochial interest. And they clung to it.
I believe Mr President knows what he was doing when he collected together 492 delegates and knowing the demography and population of Nigeria he knows that the Northern states constitute 55 percent of the official census of Nigeria and yet Mr president went ahead and nominated only 200 from the northern states and nearly 300 from the southern states. This clearly gives two third majority to the southern states.
We looked at this yet we believe in the good intention of the president and therefore we respect his invitation to the conference. We respected the invitation and we don’t respect the invitation if we come here and break up this country and if anybody thinks that he would come here and through undemocratic means of nomination, and through this undemocratic means think that they will the majority of Nigerians they are mistaken.
This country belongs to all of us and by the way if one can say it that when the British can here we fought a war and they murdered, killed, others were maimed our great grandparents, they imprisoned some of them, they exiled some of them, may be some parts of the country, yes. But this country belongs to all us and it is only good to look at Nigeria the way it is with all the complexities, with all the 250 or more different ethnic groups, every Nigerian should be given the chance to be proud of being a Nigerian.
You don’t give him that pride if you straight away marginalized him and threat like a second class citizens or something because if Mr. president coming from a small minority, as far as I am concern- Iyaw and we with our eyes wide open- can vote for him to be our president he should be magnanimous enough, be open-minded and fair-minded enough to understand that Nigerians are not limited to the small group of Iyaw people.
Though he was not explicit as to why there is a preponderance of people from the South of this country to the conference, we in the North are always very open-minded, we trusting and we trusted Mr. President and we don’t want the country to break. Secondly, this conference is very important and in spite of the disproportionate representation, our interest must be protected. Because of this preponderance of disproportionate representation, Mr. President, in his wisdom, said if you want to take a decision you either have a consensus or the least of the consensus which is 75 percent of the people agreeing with the decision, this is fair.
But when you limit it to two third majority, automatically you are telling the Northerner to get out, the conference can go on. I am not sure this is what the president wants. It will be good for Mr. president to look at the list of the delegates again and correct the marginalization of the North.
As the Northern Delegates Forum taken a position on this so far?
No, we can see that even before the conference was inaugurated, the other geo-political zones had been holding meetings and even here they had held many meetings. But, we as Northerners have not because we think we are coming here as Nigerians to discuss Nigeria.
We thought we will be talking like brothers and sisters, we did not know that positions had been made as regards relevant issues slated for discussion, particularly to marginalized and excised us Northerners from Nigeria. However, if they think they can marginalize us, the majority, they are wrong. I don’t think it will work. It won’t work, no never.
We had thought we were coming to Nigeria to discuss with our brothers and sisters but it is becoming clear that this is not the true position, there is a card being played differently, which is very very unfortunate.
Part from the impasse over the consensus, is there any other thing Northern delegates feel strongly about at the conference?
No, we have only been talking about the rules. There is only one contentious issue which has occupied out attention and time, that is the three quarter. There may be many other issues but these will be discussed at the committee level. But we know that right from the beginning, right from independence the federal government under the late prime Minister he was invited to form the government and in his characteristic Northern fashion- and that was what inherited- he decided to form a broad-based government and brought in NCNC and AG and even gave more cabinet seats to the NCNC in spite of the fact that his party- NPC had the majority.
Further, during the oil exploration, I clearly know that the colonial government advised him to start oil exploration but there was no money at that time the only group that had money was the Northern Nigeria Government through agricultural proceeds and he convinced the Sarduana to use that money free- of- charge, yes free- of- charge, in fact they could have recorded it as loan to the federal government, but they said no, this is Nigeria, we are doing it in the interest of Nigeria and they used Northern Nigeria money to explore oil.
No one can claim, yes, on one person can claim that this is not true no other regions money was used to explore oil except ours, and now that they are enjoying money from the oil, they want us to get out. Well, by the way we only want to remind us all that this country belongs to all of us, we are not excluding anybody and nobody can exclude us. This country belongs to us all, we love it and we shall work for it.
Source: People’s Daily
