National Conference is a waste of time, Tinubu says

Asiwaju Bola Tinubu

Former Governor of Lagos State and Chieftain of  All Progressive Congress, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu has on Monday stated that the planned National Conference being championed by President Jonathan is a waste of time. 

While speaking at the eight memorial anniversary of a former Chairman, Campaign for Democracy (CD),  Dr. Beko Ransome-Kuti, Tinubu advised the  president to rather than organise another National conference to instead review previous reports of the constitutional review under former President Olusegun Obasanjo and the Uwais report on electoral reform. 

He said: “A sovereign conference is an idea Beko during his lifetime championed.  Several others and myself through PRONACO and similar platforms,  have actively promoted, supported and advocated the same idea of a sovereign conference.  To insinuate that I will of all people be opposed to the convocation of a national conference that meets the prescription we have advocated is mischievous and totally untrue. The Jonathan conference is not what we have continuously agitated for.

“My opposition to the Jonathan conference is anchored on principle. In October 2013, after a deep review of the Jonathan conference proposal, I told Nigerians that the conference is not what Nigerians had advocated for. I warned that booby traps lay ahead. Though I remain an unrepentant supporter of a genuinely Sovereign National Conference, I am suspicious of this present concoction because it is half- baked and fully deceptive. Government’s sincerity is questionable, the timing is also suspect. Now that this government is sinking in a pool of political and economic hot water of its own making, it seizes hold of the national conference idea as if it were a life jacket.

“Today, there are enough contradictions and confusion to sink the conference even before it starts. Yet the government forges on.

“Before embarking on new public relations ploys to whitewash its tarnished record, the government should treat some long outstanding issues and matters. This government cannot give what it does not have.