Criticality of Urgent Ethnic Nationalities’ Conference and National Referendum
Being New Year Message From Dr. Chike Obidigbo JP, (Osisioma Igbo)
1. Let me start this message by first commiserating with families, relatives and friends of all those who lost their lives during the stampedes that occurred in different parts of the country over the distribution of food items, meant to mitigate the adverse hunger in the land at the Christmas period.
2. All the same, we thank God for seeing us through the outgoing year 2024 and pray that His mercy, love and guidance will lead us into and through the year 2025.
3. Without doubt, 2024 was a very crucial year in the history of this country, because it showed how resilient Nigerians could be, especially under another year of a Federal Government that emerged from a very tortuous and frosty general election.
4. For the Igbo nation, 2024 had been a very trying year. Apart from the continued and unjust incarceration of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), the climate of insecurity was sustained, even as political marginalization and blatant cheating that defined the preceding eight years of General Muhammadu Buhari persists as the lot of NdIgbo in Nigeria.
5. As we march with stalwart faith into year 2025, I am inclined to state that the year holds great implications for Nigeria, particularly for the Igbo nation. These implications range from social relations, politics, business, security and the progress of the younger generation.
6. To make the best of 2025 therefore, President Bola Tinubu should convoke a meeting of ethnic nationalities to revisit Nigeria’s amalgamation document, which expired in 2014. Let us stop deceiving ourselves. We all know that Britain, the colonial merchants of fortune, did not seek the consent of Nigeria’s ethnic nationalities before merging the component units into one country.
7. However, in the wisdom of the British adventurers, a proviso was made for possible review after one hundred years of the experimentation. From 1914 to 2014, Nigerians have seen that the forced amalgamation has not worked out, and may never work. The country has tried parliamentary system of government, there has been many military regimes and staggered presidential democracy.
8. But, amid these efforts at evolving an equitable and acceptable system of self governance, Nigeria has continued to totter in political instability. It has become very evident that the country can no longer be sustainable as one administrative unit, unless and until we sit down to discuss the way forward. There has been calls for separation from the major component ethnic nationalities, including the Hausa (for Arewa Republic), Igbo (for Biafra) and Yoruba (for Oduduwa Republic or Yoruba nation) among many others.
9. In the light of the foregoing, it has become very imperative for all the ethnic nationalities to come together and organise a referendum and resolve on the way forward. This is about the best way to stop further restiveness and the disgraceful slaughter of our youths in various parts of the country, especially in the far North, Middle Belt, East and West.
10. The plan for a referendum should replace the ongoing efforts by the National Assembly to further review the 1999 Constitution. Previous constitutional reviews and Electoral Acts have failed to cure the inbuilt lopsided political structure and systemic mischief that Britain welded into the amalgamation of Northern and Southern Protectorates and Lagos colony to create a “mere geographical expression” called Nigeria.
11. Interestingly, Year 2025 is of very great interest to Nigeria, because the year would mark the second anniversary of the 2023 dubious general elections. That being the case, to make peace, unity and sustainable development possible, the country must resolve through a referendum, to conduct its politics with truth, fairness and equity in mind.
12. The current Nigerian leader, President Tinubu, should not shirk the responsibility of revisiting the political structure of Nigeria in the erroneous belief that he can do what other leaders before him could not do. It has become very obvious to all well meaning Nigerians that the country is unworkable with its current historical, cultural and uneven political backgrounds.
13. Nigerians need to come together to interrogate the lopsidedness that gifted the Southwest with another Presidency after 16 cumulative years as President and Vice President. When the 19 Northern Governors on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) resolved that 2023 was the turn of the South to produce the President, they stopped short of declaring that the position should rightly go to the South East, based on their partisan and selfish designs.
14. Within the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) the same lack of contrition and statesmanship led some PDP governors to declare the presidential ticket open even with the historic sacrifice and support by the South East for the party in all of the 24 years of Eight election cycles. Nothing could be this unfair to a people that work harder than any other tribe for the unity of the country.
15. That former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and former Rivers State governor, Ezenwo Nyesom Wike, jostled for the ticket in a free for all, exposed their lack of respect for fairness and knowledge of history. That is so because in 1999, PDP was the ultimate beneficiary of the power distribution arrangement that gifted the South West the presidential slot leading to the fielding of all Presidential candidates on all the registered political parties from the zone.
16. Recently, Alhaji Abubakar announced that 2027 would be the turn of the North to throw up the President. I felt that was a very unkind and unstatesmanlike statement for the former Vice President to make. Alhaji Atiku threw away a golden opportunity to write his name in gold in Nigeria’s political history in 2023. If only the Waziri of Adamawa had reflected and recognized the contributions of late Dr. Alex Ekwueme and South East to the growth and development of PDP, especially the massive support given to the Obasanjo/Atiku Presidential ambition and Presidency, he should have been at the forefront in canvassing for South East to pick the party’s presidential ticket in 2023, more so when his running mate in the 2019 poll was from South East.
17. That Atiku decided to lower his political clout by contesting against Nyesom Wike did much harm to his politics and sold him cheaply as Wike’s equivalent than the legendary detribalized and urbane politician he packaged himself to be for several years.
18. In the coming years, if we will still move ahead together, politicians should be compelled to devote their schemes to finding pathways to fair distribution of political opportunities, including the much needed call for the old brigade to excuse themselves from the field and yield space to the younger ones. Everything under the sun, including politics and politicians, have expiry dates detribalized and urbane politician he packaged himself to be for several years.
18. In the coming years, if we will still move ahead together, politicians should be compelled to devote their schemes to finding pathways to fair distribution of political opportunities, including the much needed call for the old brigade to excuse themselves from the field and yield space to the younger ones. Everything under the sun, including politics and politicians, have expiry dates.
19. The South East, unfortunately lacks political leadership. Most of our so-called political leaders are always on their own, bereft of popular followership. The people will rather take directives from Simon Ekpa, in faraway Finland, to sit at home every Monday, rather than listen to their governors or political office holders. This ugly situation may likely continue that way until Igbo politicians learn to eschew their deep selfishness and play for the collective interest. The hurry to align with outside elements to undermine group interest and shadow-boxing among themselves should be avoided before the people would take them seriously.
20. The recent jostling over the membership of the South East Development Commission (SEDC) shows that the present crops of political representatives are just there to fend for their personal intentions and aggrandizement. It is indeed disheartening that, months after President Bola Tinubu signed the SEDC bill into law and constituted the members, petty political interests have combined to delay the screening of committee members and eventual take-off of that important interventionist agency.
21. With the antics of some political actors it would not be surprising, but very disappointing if the SEDC ends up in the same mould as the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) by being “huge in funding, but scant in project delivery”.
22. The widespread insecurity in the country, ( which is now seriously ravaging the South East state of Anambra), defined by kidnapping, banditry and violence has become a ready evidence of failure of governance. It is worrisome that apart from occasional mention, the Federal and State governments, notably Anambra, have not done much to confront the monster. All these combine to make the envisaged conference of ethnic nationalities and referendum not only very imperative, but very urgent
23. As we get into the new year, let us, as citizens, learn to demonstrate fear of God and love of neighbour, by taking decisions and actions that will instantly halt the cold blooded massacre of our youths, both in uniform and in mufti.
24. The best way to hail Nigeria and ensure that it becomes a land where no one is oppressed is through love and affection, which can only come through a mutually beneficial agreement to live together peacefully, as one people. This is the Referendum that I sincerely propose.
25. Happy New Year to us all.
