*Says Credibility Of NASS Is On The Line
*Says Nigeria May Break If Next Presidency Does Not Go To The South
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Erudite international scholar, Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), and Professor of International Law and Jurisprudence, Akin Oyebode, has described the celebration of the passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill, PIB, as a “comedy of errors”.
In an interview with DARE ADEKANMBI of Tribune Newspaper, Oyebode said the PIB that they are trying to celebrate is fraught with controversy in terms of who are the persons to be rewarded for the devastation of crude oil exploitation.
He added that despite the controversy training the amendment of the Electoral Act, only the Nigerian Communication Commission was invited and Independent Electoral Commission has been prevented from coming.
According to him, the members of the National Assembly do not need to celebrate anything because their credibility has suffered a distasteful attack.
He said, “It is actually a comedy of error for them to be self-congratulatory for their two years in office. Their track record is not all that ennobling. Even the PIB that they are trying to celebrate is fraught with controversy in terms of who are the persons to be rewarded for the devastation of crude oil exploitation. And talking of the land bearing areas vis a vis the frontier communities through which the pipelines pass through, the differential in the percentage of the production cost to be paid is causing a lot of hue and cry. If you said three or five per cent vis a vis those over whose territory the pipelines pass, the communities in the Niger Delta are aggrieved. They feel that they have been enslaved and they have not been rescued from their place of underdevelopment. So, the PIB is an issue that is continuing. It is not a finished business yet, not to talk of being a success story.
“Talking about the Electoral Act Amendment Bill, the controversy is still on as to whether the majority actually voted the first time before the Speaker asked for an adjournment and requested the intervention of the chairmen of INEC and the National Communications Commission in terms of access to Internet. And you know that despite the controversy, INEC was prevented from coming and they listened only to the NCC which gave statistics that are still a subject of debate.
“I think the National Assembly should not precipitately roll out the drums in celebration of its records. On the contrary, their credibility has suffered a distasteful attack. The members of the National Assembly generally in the House of Representatives and the Senate have to be reticent and circumspect about what the people think of them. So, it is precipitate for them to declare a victory song. I think their credibility is on the line. The jury is still out about what to say of their tenure. That is my take in terms of the National Assembly.”
On the call by some Norther Groups for the North needs to hold on to the presidency for four more years to bring about political equilibrium following the death of Umaru Yar’Adua which robbed the North of half of his first tenure, Oyebode said the consequence of doing that might be cataclysmic and it might be the end of Nigeria.
The distinguished professor said people have the feeling that Buhari is anti-South and the when a pole is bent, the only way to straighten it is to bend it the other way.
He said, “Well, I have news for them. If you are going to resist the transition that the Southern governors are honestly calling for, then the consequence might be cataclysmic and it might be the end of Nigeria as we know it because we are having a coalescence of interests between South-West, South-South and the South-East. And nobody thought of geopolitical zones when they were talking of alternating power between the North and the South, even though the North is no longer monolithic because we have the Benue people.
“I have heard also the North-Central people make a case for this turn-by-turn democracy. The fault lines are becoming so obvious that if the Northern cowboys are not careful, they might bring out the demise of Nigeria. It is no idle threat because people have the feeling that Buhari is anti-South and the when a pole is bent, the only way to straighten it is to bend it the other way. So, if they want to insist that they should call the shot, it is a gambit of which they have to be very careful. They claim to be more populous than the rest of the country which might be a wrong calculation because we don’t even know how many people there are. I have heard it said that the Yoruba people alone are about 60 million. All that is speculation because it is when we have a proper census that we will know how Nigeria has defeated the normal trend when people closer to the coasts and who inhabit the evergreen forest cannot be fewer than those who are living in Sahelian or desert territory.
“There are so many things we are not sure of in Nigeria and the number one thing is the census: how many Nigerians there are? If people now know that they are really not in the majority, then the big lie, just like Donald Trump’s big lie, will be exposed and things will no longer be the same. That is my admonition to those who think like that.”
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