Dialogue: Atiku Group Backs Sovereign National Conference

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar’s support group, “Turaki Network for Change” (TNC) has expressed its support for a Sovereign National Conference, as the best option to find solution to the numerous problems and challenges bedeviling the nation.

This is coming on the heels of allegations by the Nigeria Youth For positive Change (NYPC) that the President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration had not shown any serious commitment in addressing the issue of corruption  and other challenges bedeviling the nation.

The group insisted that the federal government has been playing politics with important sectors of the country’s economy.
National Coordinator of TNC, Aminu  Gwandu stated this yesterday while addressing newsmen at the secretariat of Nigerian Union of Journalist (NUJ).

He said, “Convening a genuine sovereign national conference was genuine response to our agitations ,we welcome national conference but it must be sovereign ,each state must be given allocation based on their strength,  and ethnic, religious and cultural groups must be given slots."

He said, “Conference would provide Nigerians the platform needed to dialogue and fathom a federal structure which the outcome result would arrest the impending catastrophe of disintegrating Nigeria along primordial structures and interests.”
According to him, sovereign conference would give the fundamental objectives and directive principles of state policy as enshrined in chapter three of the 1999 constitution.

The National Coordinator of the group, Comrade Nasiru Kabiru, who stated this yesterday in Bauchi while addressing a press conference on the state of the nation’s economy 53 years after its independence, lamented that corruption has eaten deep into the executive, legislature and judiciary.

He said it was a pathetic situation that has continued to deteriorate to the extent of becoming a normal way of life in the country.
According to him, “The fight against corruption in Nigeria has been reduced to empty sloganeering by anti-corruption agencies and the chorus is echoed loudest by corrupt public officials.  The EFCC, ICPC, Police and other Anti-corruption agencies have been reduced to government errand staff. About 50 per cent of Nigeria 2011 Federal budget was stolen in the name of fuel subsidy and until this moment, none of the shady oil marketers is in jail. Nobody NNPC and the Accountant General
Office has been brought to book.”

He alleged that state governors have become demi-gods that are too powerful, corrupt and uncontrollable to the extent that they have acquired so much immunity and can no longer be prosecuted.

“The issue of joint state local government account is the idea of the state governors because they want to continue to loot the funds of the local councils. We have a nation whereby state governments can no longer pay local government salaries. These same Governors are the ones kicking against the autonomy of local council because they are the ones benefiting from it. They are saying that the council chairmen will misuse the funds while in the actual sense it is for their pocket.”