Confrence to reposition Nigeria —Awolowo Dosumu

2

3

4

5

(0 votes)

Dr Tokunbo Awolowo Dosumu, who is a delegate, has said she had no reason to doubt President Goodluck Jonathan on hs promise that the conference was meant to reposition the country.

ADVERTISEMENT

In an interview, she stated: “Mr President is the one that set up this conference. It stands to reason that the report should be submitted to him. In his speech at the inauguration of the conference, he said, ‘Let me at this point thank the National Assembly for introducing the provision for referendum in the proposed amendment of the constitution. This will be relevant for this conference if at the end of the conference, the need for a referendum arises. I therefore urged the National Assembly and state Houses of Assembly to speed up the constitutional amendment process, especially with regards to the subject of referendum.
“That gives me a lot of confidence and peace of mind that Mr President is not averse to the idea of a referendum, which alone, to my mind, would finally make sense while we are here. It will be the proper route to go and I’m hoping that he has been a listening president so far, in convoking the conference first of all, in accepting that the recommendations will not go to the National Assembly necessarily, I believe, then it reassures me that our recommendations would find their way appropriately to the people to put their final stamp on the document.”
On the progress of work so far at the conference, Dr Awolowo Dosumu said, “I think it is rather slow. I had hoped that we would be debating the president’s speech by now, but I suppose people want their voices to be heard. For some of us, it is more important than others and it is only at the plenary as somebody said this morning (Tuesday), that people can have their say in court, so to speak. The media is there; people can see them talking and all the rest of it. So, it is part of the process; I don’t think we can deny them that.
“Finally, I think that we are almost through with the job of the rules of procedure now. All we need to do now is to ratify after we have disposed of the matter of consensus or what percentage would be considered adequate to make any changes in this constitution. But having said that, my opinion is that we are here to make a difference. The president, at least 10 times, one way or the other in different terms, said that we should make a change, get a stronger, united country; be more progressive; be more inclusive; everything that could lead to change. That is why we are at the conference. Even if he didn’t say so, so many times, we know that if things were okay with Nigeria, there would be no need for the conference. So, our purpose of being here is to make fundamental changes that would make the difference we desire. Now, in order to make those changes, we need to convince one another, we need to lobby, we need to convince everybody to come on board.
“We need to do a lot of work. I don’t think it is impossible to get people to agree. I suppose in the process of negotiation, people take positions as far as possible, but as time goes on, I believe people come together. But I do think 75 per cent is a little bit too higher,” Awolowo Dosumu said.