Monday 24 March 2014

Odia Ofeimum unviels book - “THIS CONFERENCE MUST BE DIFFERENT”




A day before President Goodluck Jonathan on Monday, March 17, 2014 opened a national conference of about 500 delegates in Abuja, which aims to tackle Nigeria’s burning issues and foster unity, poet and political analyst, Odia Ofeimun, presented three books.
Namely: “THIS CONFERENCE MUST BE DIFFERENT,” “WHEN DOES THE CIVIL WAR REALLY END?” and “TAKING NIGERIA SERIOUSLY”, “THIS CONFERENCE MUST BE DIFFERENT,” was the subject of discussion at the symposium held at MUSON Centre, Lagos on Sunday, March 16, 2014.
The former private secretary to late politician, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, was elated that he completed the three books, which he said were very difficult books to write. “I am now an old man but I have always told myself since I was young, that if there is anything I must do, I must help to give answers to some of the questions that trouble Nigeria. I am glad I have done that in these three books. We are self critical people. Nigeria has many ethnic groups. That we have managed ourselves to a point that we are planning on how to make it better is quite commendable,” the poet said.
The first section of the book begins with a statement made by Governor of Edo State and former President of the Nigerian Labour Congress, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, that:This conference will not be different from any previous conference.”
Ofeimun, in the book says: “I strongly disagree. I wish to assert the contrary: that this conference will be different; it will provide defining moments beyond all the shenanigans of the past; it will buttress ideas that were injudiciously outlawed from previous conferences; and it will enlarge the room for creativity beyond and above what was possible before. Even if there is some alchemy that can prevent it from taking place - in these days of mismanaged university strikes and purloined gubernatorial elections -  whoever succeeds in achieving such a negative feat will have to carry the burden of making it happen again, sooner rather than later.  Or earn opprobrium that will never cease.
“I take it that the political skills needed to make such a difference are actually within the grasp of the Comrade Governor and other skeptics like All-Progressive Congress leader, former Governor of Lagos State, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu who, in my view, should be prevailed upon to reconsider their positions and to join in the boil of the discussions. Especially now that, their party, the All-Progressive Congress, APC, has arrived at mega status, they must be assumed to have a broader position from which to make a difference. They have had enough experience in and out of office to appreciate the actual workings, as well as the dysfunctionality, of the Nigerian polity. So, even without gruelling research, they know how to navigate the issues. Specifically, for the Comrade Governor, who has only so many years left of his two-term tenure - he must be deemed to know that, if he misses this opportunity offered by the conference, he risks running out of time to make his input from the position of an incumbent. To boycott or postpone it, in the hope that a different political  arrangement will emerge that is better for his ken than the existing one, is to make constitutional reform too subordinate to partisan promptings in pursuit of political power. As for the other APC leader, Major General Mohammadu Buhari, he has had a historical baggage of being, once upon a time, too strait-laced against such a dialogue  in his pursuit of draconian change. He owes his many followers, and the whole country, a responsibility not to want to repeat the past in a way that could find many incumbents in his party joining or leading demonstrations for constitutional change, only after their tenure in office.  So to say,  the strategy of complaining ever so loudly about how the Federal Government and its agencies are taking more than their fair share of power and resources, while rejecting the chance to confront it as a solvable theorem, is not good enough.  Similarly, any gloating over the failure of past conferences which offers no chance to brace alternatives, can be seen as a genuine bid to escape the rigours of serious debate.”
He noted in the book that, “Irrespective of whether it is a sovereign national conference, a mere national conference, a conversation, a dialogue or a deal of whatever stamp, those with ideas that cannot pass muster are  the ones expected to bow out in the face of superior argument. This is the way things are supposed to work in a democracy. It is the reason that the very idea of a national conference has refused to die. Although very much knocked about, sidelined, backhanded out of the way, and then taken up, manhandled and aborted on the corridors of power, it has, like the mythical phoenix, returned again and again, each time more insistent than the last. It has now been roaded in a way that some strong body of opinion consider unexpected.  Still, may it be stated, and very quickly, that it was not unexpected by those who took President Goodluck Jonathan seriously enough to give him due credit for the attention he was paying to constitutional reforms
“The odd part is that the nay-saying has come from political leaders who had whipped up the country to frenzy about the need for a conference. To be fair to them, they wished only for a conference that would be sovereign and not merely national. Their efforts for more than a decade, added up to the pressures that  caused President Jonathan, following Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Umaru Yar’adua, to stand for constitutional reforms of a nature that obviously has not registered well with the agitators. Quite intriguing is that the reasons that they have given for opposing or doubting the value of this particular conference, are actually among the best that one can have for jumping into the bandwagon of the national conference proposition. As I hope to make clear in this intervention, all the reasons being advanced by the nay-sayers deserve to be accommodated as contributions to the impending debates because they raise questions that cut into the fears of majority of Nigerians who are however bent on seeing that something good will come out of the current exercise,” he stated in the book.
In summary, he maintained that the book was not only about National Conference but about every Nigerian.
Born in Iruekpen-Ekuma,Edo state, Nigeria, in 1950, the former president of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), who clocked 64 years old recently studied Political Science at the University of Ibadan, where his poetry won first prize in the University Competition of 1975.
He has worked as an administrative officer in the Federal Public Service Commission, as a teacher, as Private (Political) Secretary to Chief Obafemi Awolowo, leader of the Unity Party of Nigeria, and as a member of the editorial board of The Guardian Newspapers in Lagos. Ofeimun’s published collections of poetry include The Poet Lied (1980), A Handle For The Flutist (1986), Dreams At Work and London Letter And Other Poems (2000) and so on.
Prof. Kole Omotosho hinted the Odia has been his friend since early 1970s to the extent that he is regarded as part of his family. “His enthusiasm, his optimism about project Nigeria amazes me. He is the easiest person to call and point out all the negatives which he regards as positives. He is concerned about Nigeria. For the past six months I have been in Nigeria, all we discuss is National Conference.” Omotosho said.
Some of Odia’s childhood friends such as Comrade Albert Uduehi and John Akhabue spoke passionately about him and revealed how they lived together as young men and cracked palm kernels to drink garri together.
Few people graced the book presentation because Odia said he didn’t want to make it public so he needed a few friends and colleagues to be present at the occasion.



No comments: