Benin – By Oladipo Airenakho
Nigeria’s renowned poet, Dr. Odia Ofeimu, on Thursday said the only way Nigeria could come out of its current socio-political quagmire was the total amendment of the Nation’s constitution.
Ofeimu said this at the Fourth Dr Abel Guobadia memorial lecture organized by the Women’s Health and Action Centre (WHARC) in Benin, Edo State.
In the lecture entitled ‘‘The 2014 National Conference: Looking Back, and Looking Forward,’’ the erudite scholar opined that a review of the current constitution would address the present socio-political imbroglio.
‘‘The snag is that a country driven by do or die battles arising from regional vetoes and unsolved ethnic Arithmetic cannot find the way to answers.’’
‘‘ We are getting hair-raising talks about post-election violence and the end of the Federation called Nigeria in 2015 as some doomsday dirty jobbers have tamed it.’’
He however said that the truth of the matter is that we cannot find solutions unless we bid within a common morality which is what a good constitution institutes; not a benign one for you and yours, and a pernicious one for others.
‘‘Confidently we can change Nigeria into a livable space of happy, unafraid, determined, free, loving and creative people instead of having a world that is flat, one-dimensional, a world of only one colour one kind of music, one religion or ideology, in which people have to act against their better selves in order to survive the debilities of so called market forces that have forces but no markets for jobs acceptable to honest citizens,’’ he said.
According to him, “it is such a space that the idea of a National Conference was always fishing and bidding for beyond political immediacies.
It had always been rightly believed that if skilfully convened it could eliminate the fear of a shared future between different Nigerian nationalities and enhance conversational civility between diverse fractions and factions.’’
“The short of the matter is that an unusually gifted collection of nationalities, ill-informed to a most disabling degree, without affective access to one another that truly links hearts and minds through exposure to a common morality, how can they solve simple economic problems while each is thinking of how to overcome the other’s advantages instead of going for the goal that puts all and sundry as winners?”
Ofeimu further questioned: “Where would empathy come from as a defining ethic to humanize dreams and put them to work for the whole society when the grandest ideals, even divine injunctions are being subverted against genuine cooperation that we all need to heal the existential plagues that our lives are becoming?”
He said a constitution that will outlast its makers must derive its rationale from collective ambitions that are not driven by immediate, or merely alimentary, concerns but Unity and welfare.
He insisted that a good constitution ‘‘must seek a shared future, based on justice and a common, benign morality…. as a syllabus of ideals into the next Nigerian Century and beyond.’’
While x-raying the live and times of Guobadia, Ofeimu, said “I am simply intrigued by his contribution to public service as a boss of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC in the Fourth Republic.
‘‘A brief engagement with the latter is actually, in my view, a fair way to enter into the theme of this lecture.
I call it an entry, because anyone may be forgiven who thinks that a memorial lecture in honour of a former Chairman of an electoral commission, a man who was in the very cockpit of nurturing our nascent democracy as a manager of national elections, is a fit and proper place to discuss a national conference organized for the purpose of crafting a new constitution for Nigeria.’’
“Some of his experiences can be fleshed from proposals that he makes, such as his demand for a new INEC, informed by the recommendations of the Electoral Review committee, with a new register of voters to eliminate the “many bogus and strange names” of earlier exercises.
Since, ten years after Guobadia’s exit as Chairman of INEC, he continued the organization is still battling to have the permanent voters’ register that he made a commitment to, and had carried to an advanced stage before the end of his term, stressing that it does matter that “we continue to his charge.”
“We need to re-appraise its value as a necessary fixture of the integrity of an electoral commission.’’
According to him, this could be a good way to prime the efforts of the current Chairman, Professor Attahiru Jega, as he confronts the problems of the 2015 General elections and beyond.
“In this regard, one great problem Guobadia notes for special appraisal is the common practice in INEC of subordinating “highly qualified and highly-rated experienced staff” to or replacing them with “ill-equipped favoured lower level staff and hurriedly recruited staff of doubtful political leaning and with no prior training for their new job.”
Ofeimu said “in an era, of do or die politics, which had damaged the possibilities of reforms and left so many issues to be treated with levity and licence, it is understandable that he should have worried about this and the standards that could give integrity to the organization..’’
‘‘These days, as we witness the giddy movements towards the 2015 General Elections, it is apposite that we have an opportunity to gather for one whose role in this contentious territory can still be weighed in to see how far and how well we are travelling’’.
He remarked that the ongoing, hullabaloo over the non-availability of Permanent Voter’s Card, PVC, under Professor Attahiru Jega’s INEC in the 2015 elections, may well be viewed not only from the standpoint of putting a dampener on the process of searching for transparency in the 2015 General Elections, but re-engineering the organization.
“While looking at the questions that arise, why couldn’t PVCs have arrived two years before the elections so that corrections and revisions would go on a pace for a whole year before the election year?
If such untoward things can happen under Jega, who has a well-earned reputation for integrity, where lays the salvation for Nigeria?”
Ofemju went further:
“ it gives the impression of padding; mere padding with the presumption always bobbing up to the surface that there is in Nigerian politics a psychological wrench based on a structural mismatch between different parts of the country, especially between North and South which stands in the way of wholesome behaviour and which must be healed for Nigeria to achieve her full undoubted potential.
‘‘ But how can Nigeria achieve that potential if we are all obliged to accept figures for population census and registers of voters that we all know to be simply unreliable if not useless.’’
‘‘With sanctity removed from the figures through unhealthy haggle, surely, it becomes too easy to assume an unwillingness by the state to stand fast for effectuation of the people’s will’’.
“ Whether elections can be free and fair, in the circumstance becomes so much a matter of turning context into destiny rather than a matter of the character or will of the individual personnel.’’
“The short of the matter is that we can all consensually agree that across Nigeria’s history, every electoral commission has been mired in such incongruous situations.
In a good will message by the Resident Electoral Commissioner of Edo State Engr. Mike Igini said that the 2015 General Election will be free and fair noting that the Permanent Voters Card and the Card Reader Machine are of importance in this regard.
He insisted that the implementation of the existing platform laid by Dr. Guobadia will go a long way in reducing electoral malpractices in this 2015 General Election.
Earlier The Chairman Board of Trustees of Women’s Health and Action Research Centre (WHARC), Lady Winifred Onyeonwu in her welcome address commended the founder of WHARC, Professor Friday Okonofua for working tirelessly in formulating policies through research, documentation and implementation for the improvement of the health sector in Nigeria.
She noted that he was the brain behind the growth of WHARC and the Annual Dr. Abel Guobadia Memorial Lecture.
Professor Cyril Monkwenye the Executive Director of the Women’s Health and Action Research Centre (WHARC) threw light on the importance of the occasion.
According to him, ‘‘Dr. Abel Guobadia shared in our aspirations and contributed in no small measure in helping us to achieve our dreams.
He became a member of our Board of Trustees in 1997 and two years after, he became the Chairman of the Board. He occupied this position creditably for twelve years before his demise four years ago.’’
Describing the former INEC Chairman, (Rev) Eghosa Osaghae the Chairman of the Occasion said that Guobadia was a distinguished man from birth and a great political scientist who has contributed greatly to the INEC of Nigeria.
