PH Residents Endorse National Confab

As Nigerians agitate and
prepare for  national conference, some residents of Port Harcourt and concerned citizens have expressed their views on the issue.
A respondent, Mr Emeka Iwezor, told The Tide that since the leadership of the country has not been able to do the right things that would move the nation forward, it has become necessary for the different ethnic nationalities to come together and decide their faith.
Iwezor, a Port Harcourt-based businessman, said that whether the conference is tagged sovereign or not does not matter but, “what we want is a forum where Nigerians will gather to discuss issues affecting them. National conference is good.”
According to him, the British colonialists clustered everything about the existence of Nigeria and failed to discuss and agree on the social, economic, political, and security affairs of the country, pointing out that those kicking against the conference have skeletons in their cupboards.
Enumerating the benefits of the conference if held, Iwezor  opined that it would cover all about the Nigeria project which  include  federalism, military or security operation, the power at federal, state and local government levels, how the economy would be controlled at all levels among others, pointing out that leadership of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), as a large family, is bound to disagree.
Another respondent, Mr Anyanwu Ethelbert expressed disappointment at the economic management system and advocated a system whereby the various states would control their resources and pay a stipulated percentage to the central government.
Ethelbert decried the situation whereby resources from minority states are used to develop non-resourceful states to the detriment of the producers of the resources, regretting that the South-South and the Niger Delta region that produce the bulk of the nation’s resources and foreign earnings have for so long been neglected and the people left in abject poverty and hunger.
Stressing the need for an all encompassing national or sovereign national  conference to be organized in the country, he said it was high time Nigerians decided on how the country should continue to exist so that the lives and properties of the citizens would stop to be endangered and wasted.
Also fielding questions, Miss Innocent Norah said, “ Nigerians are now living in fear with rising unemployment, abject poverty and general insecurity and re-echoed the need for a national conference or an atmosphere where all the issues bothering the country should be discussed with a view to charting the way forward.

Shedie Okpara