National conference: Lawyers, politicians disagree on Mark’s position

Some lawyers on Sunday said the endorsement of a national conference by Senate President, David Mark, was a realisation that the challenges facing the country needed to be discussed.

However a member of the Publicity Committee of All Progressives Congress in the South-East zone, Mr. Osita Okechukwu, has described Mark’s call as “suspect and diversionary.”

Okechukwu, who is a former Enugu State governorship candidate of the defunct Congress for Progressives Change, told The PUNCH on Sunday that only a sovereign national conference would address the challenges facing the country.

He said, “The national conference Mark and President Goodluck Jonathan are calling for is a desperate means to cover up their incapacity and inept leadership, hence the confusion which engulfed the PDP.

“Why can’t Senator Mark use his good offices to embark on meaningful Constitutional amendment?”

 He said he would not support the call for a national conference, because the major evil bedeviling the polity was the “monumental corruption at all tiers of government,” not ethnic division.

“The Jonathan administration has failed to address the monumental scourge of corruption which is turning into a trade mark of his regime,” he noted.

Okechukwu, also the National Publicity Secretary of the Conference of Nigerian Political Parties, said if there was going to be a constitutional conference it should be sovereign.

He said, “Yes sovereign because the national and state assemblies have failed the country. They have been turned into trade centres and rubber stamp parliaments. For a example, a true parliament could have adopted the core recommendations of the Justice Uwais Electoral Reforms.”

But the lawyer in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria in Lagos, said that it was important a national conference was convened in order for the country to remain a single, peaceful entity.

According to the  chairman, Nigerian Bar Association, Ikeja branch, Mr. Onyekachi Ubani, Nigeria stands to gain by organising a talk where the questions of the ethnic nationalities staying together will be honestly and unemotionally discussed.

Meanwhile, Ekiti State Governor, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, has stressed the need for a national conference to put an end to the various crises militating against Nigeria as a nation.

Fayemi made the call while receiving officials of the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs who paid him a courtesy visit in Ado-Ekiti.

The state Commissioner for Integration and Inter-governmental Affairs, Funminiyi Afuye, who received the team on behalf of the governor, emphasised the need for a roundtable conference that would allow the different ethnics groups in the country express their views and proffer solution, to the numerous problems facing the country.

The governor reiterated the commitment of his administration to conflict resolution through roundtable discussion for the purpose of genuine peace and unity.

He however advised all stakeholders to always exercise caution and decorum in the pursuit of their perceived rights and vested interest, noting that crisis could lead to war if not quickly and properly manage to bring understanding, unity and peace.