In the next three months,
beginning from today, 492 ‘wise men’ who are believed to be the true  representatives of over 160 million Nigerians will be putting the soul of Nigeria on the slab, courtesy of the national conference. The national dialogue which kicks off today in the nation’s capital, Abuja with the inauguration of  492 delegates is a platform that affords Nigerians yet another opportunity to agree on the basis of their togetherness.
The state of the nation which has been held captive by the nation’s main fault lines – politics, religion and ethnicity, has made the conference compellingly appealing to many Nigerians, even though some others have questioned the timing of the conference and the motive behind the Federal Government’s sudden romance with a national dialogue it had consistently rejected as unnecessary.
This year’s talkshop will be one in a series of discussions that would take place since the amalgamation of the Southern and Northern protectorates by the British colonialists in 1914 to form a single entity known as Nigeria. The first discussion which took place in 1922 gave birth to Clifford Constitution which  introduced the principle of election in Nigerian politics. This was followed by another talkshop which produced the 1946 Richard Constitution that recognised regionalism in Nigeria, and then the 1951 Macpherson Constitution which was a bye-product of a conference that recognised federalism and expanded the frontiers of regional autonomy.
In 1953, there was yet another constitutional conference in London that produced a federal constitution known as the 1954 Lyttleton Constitution. That constitution allocated limited but specific powers to the federal government while allowing the three regions that made up Nigeria at that time – North, West and East, to develop at their own pace.
The 1957 constitutional conference also in London, prepared Nigeria for independence and gave birth to the 1960 Constitution; while the conference that produced the 1963 Republican Constitution formally freed Nigeria from the apron strings of the British colonialists. The year 1978 saw Nigeria organising a constituent Assembly which produced the 1979 Constitution and the presidential system of government, while 20 years later, Nigeria achieved another constitution – 1999 Constitution which is now in place, and currently undergoing amendment.
With the exemption of the 1995 and 2005 national confabs held under General Sani Abacha and former President Olusegun Obasanjo, respectively, and whose  outcome were not effected, other national dialogues produced results and made clear impacts in moving Nigeria forward. This year’s talk shop  is expected to produce similar results, depending however on how the 492 delegates canvass and aggregate their views at the confab.
Most of the discussions that will feature in the conference are already in the public domain, as have been  canvassed by several ethnic groups in the country. But the most central and perhaps most thorny ones are issues of true federalism and resource control. Given the cacophony of voices trailing these two issues over the years, with the South-West and South-South leading the campaign in favour of true federalism and resource control as against the North’s retention of the status quo, it will require a political savvy on the   part of the delegates to resolve the impasse these contentious issues might create.
Rising from a Pan-Niger Delta conference organised by the Social Development Integrated Centre in collaboration with other civil society and community groups in Port Harcourt on January 28, the South South demanded a structuring of the country into a truly federal state where the component ethnic nationalities own and control their natural resources with residual powers residing in the constituent units.
Also on February 24, the various ethnic nationalities in Southern Nigeria met in Calabar to articulate their positions in the national conference. The Southern leaders summit which was attended by delegates from the three southern geopolitical zones – South-West, South-East and South-South deliberated extensively on the issue of resource control as the only way to make the federating units look inward by exploring and exploiting their natural resources under the economic principle of comparative advantage. It also recommended an increase in the percentage of revenue allocation from oil and gas production under the derivation principle.
In a separate position, the Committee of Benin Elders, just like their counterparts in the South-West, proposed regional governments.  The Benin Elders Committee particularly proposed the structuring of the country into eight regions with four regions each for Northern Nigeria and Southern Nigeria. The committee also proposed that the regions should be allowed to control their resources and pay a royalty tax of 25 per cent to the Federal Government.
For the Northern Nigeria, however, there was the need for a review of the revenue sharing formular. Although the North held no mini or pre-national conference to articulate a common position to be presented at the national conference, its leaders have consistently opposed the idea of resource control, just as they have always argued that the huge allocations to the South South, where the bulk of the nation’s revenue comes from through oil exploration, amount to an injustice. The Arewa Consultative Forum which is regarded as the mouthpiece of the North, at a public hearing  in Sokoto, called for the abolition of onshore/offshore dichotomy in the calculation  of revenue accruing to the littoral states.
While it may be difficult to predict the outcome of the confab, there are two issues that are germane to the success or otherwise of the talkshop. The first is the issue of whether or not Nigeria should remain as one indivisible entity. And if the answer is yes, what will be the term of reference of living together peacefully?
Although President Goodluck Jonathan had during the inauguration of the Presidential Advisory Committee on National Dialogue, last year, foreclosed any discussion on the unity of the country, the objection of some delegates to the President’s no-go-area, calls for utmost caution, especially against the backdrop of secession threat by a section of the South East, as represented by  the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB).
There is also a groundswell of objections to some recommendations of the Senator Femi Okunrounmu-led Presidential Advisory Committee which designed the modality for the national conference. While the committee recommended that the outcome of the conference be ratified by the National Assembly,   many Nigerians, including some of the delegates prefer that the outcome of the confab be subjected to a referendum.
Whatever option the confab chooses to ratify its decisions, it is expected that the outcome will promote unity and peace among all ethnic nationalities, and above all assuage the feelings of ordinary people who have over the past 100 years of existence as Nigerians been held down by socio-economic, political and ethno -religious challenges that were recently exarcerbated  by the seemingly intractable Boko Haram insurgency.

L-R: Afenifere Chieftain, Sir Olaniwun Ajayi, Governor Abiola Ajimobi of Oyo State and Chief Ayo Adebanjo, during the preliminary meeting of the Yoruba Committee on National Conference in Ijebu Ode last Monday

Boye Salau