BALARABE MUSA WARNS: UNLESS SOVEREIGN NATIONAL CONFERENCE IS HELD BLOODY REVOLUTION IS IMMINENT 

Written by Culled From Punch on 19 May 2012.

A former Governor of Kaduna State and leader of the Conference of Nigerian Political Parties, Alhaji Balarabe Musa, has warned of an imminent military coup or revolution in Nigeria.

He said in Kaduna on Friday that unless a Sovereign National Conference was convened, a drastic solution to the myriad of problems besetting the country was inevitable. Although Musa noted that the convocation of the SNC was risky, he said it was the only way to avert the impending revolution in the country.

The former governor said this in a paper entitled, Towards Enthroning and Sustaining Democratic Practices and Ethos in Our Polity, delivered at the 2012 Law Week of the Nigerian Bar Association, Kaduna branch.

He insisted that as long as Nigerians were being denied by their leaders to have a say in national issues, the nation’s democracy might he heading for danger.

Musa recalled that the regimes of Gen. Sani Abacha, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida and former President Olusegun Obasanjo failed to correct the ills done to the country because they failed to fully involve the people in the national conferences they conducted.

He said the country was gradually tilting toward dictatorship because the current political system in operation was just a semblance of democracy.

He said, “If the national conferences to be established, conducted and controlled by the sovereign people of Nigeria cannot hold, then Nigeria runs the risk of undemocratic forces taking over political power as happened many times in the past.

“There may even be a social revolution qualitatively superior and more effective than the present Arab Spring in the form of a Sovereign National Conference, which must proceed with a revolutionary struggle to establish a new reality of power to replace the existing one and establish an interim administration to conduct, direct and control the conference which can review and renew Nigeria.

“Only the people of Nigeria are sovereign and they can assert their sovereignty when there is no peaceful alternative. The sovereign people of Nigeria constitute all Nigerians aged 18 years and above and are registered voters.

“There are risks in both National Conference and Sovereign National Conference, but the risks of continuing like this and the political adventure involved are greater.

“Those who realise the risks and fear them and still want the National Conference or the Sovereign National Conference must be good in reducing or even eliminating the risks. That is what other leaders in other countries that achieved or are achieving greatness did and are doing.

“Why should Nigeria be different and pathetic? The present work of amending the 1999 Constitution by the National Assembly lacks credibility and the possibility of solving the problems of the negative state of the nation.”

He said during the British colonial rule in Nigeria and the First Republic, because of the leading role of public interest, there was more nationalism, patriotism, credibility, quality leadership and performance. He said even though resources were meagre and the system controlling all developments was colonial, semi-feudal and conservative, the ruling classes consciously protected the system that was given birth to and sustained them unlike the present bourgeois ruling class.

“What we have in Nigeria has nothing to do with democracy. It is a combination of narrow self interest, dictatorship and anarchy.

“We have a civilian rule instead of military rule, and it is this civilian rule which we wrongly call and regard as democracy.

“As preferable as civilian rule is, it is not democracy because it can be more irrelevant and dictatorial than military rule.”