North’ll truncate confab — OKUROUNMU

BY GBENGA OKELAGOS—The ongoing National Conference is bound to fail given the alleged determination of the North to frustrate the process for the purpose of sustaining the status quo, Senator Femi Okurounmu, chairman of the presidential advisory committee, which birthed the confab, has said.Okurounmu, who said Northern delegates came to the Conference with a single mindset to block changes to the system in the country, said that progressive Nigerians desirous of change would only achieve their quest for change only through prayers.Senator Okurounmu spoke at the 2014 annual luncheon, lecture and merit award of Government College Ibadan Old Boys Association, Lagos Branch.He said: “The military that brought about the 1999 Constitution are all from the core North and they so redirected the states and local governments to favour their people because they assumed that the North will always be in power and so they made the central government very strong and ensured the units are so weak.”“Since the inception of this conference, three different categories of people have emerged. We have delegates from the South-West who are anticipating fundamental changes such as regionalism, substantial devolution of power to regions and zones.We also have people from the South-South fighting for the issue of resource control and ownership of their resources while the Middle Belt is interested in the completion of Ajaokuta industry but the North came solely to block majority of these recommendations to ensure the status quo is maintained