A former Vice Chancellor of the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Ango Abdullahi, on Thursday criticised the process of choosing delegates for the 2014 national conference, saying it was the reason the northern part of the country rejected the report.
Mr. Abdullahi, who is the chairman of Northern Elders’ Forum, said the north rejected the report because delegates convened by former President Goodluck Jonathan to the conference were not selected through a democratic process.
He also asked resource control campaigners, including former Akwa Ibom governor, Victor Attah, to discard the idea, and instead campaign for resource management, Nation newspaper reported Friday.
Mr. Abdullahi spoke on Thursday at an event marking the 90th birthday of a former minister, Edwin Clark, held in Abuja.
Mr. Abdullahi said he spoke in his personal capacity not on behalf of the NEF.
Mr. Attah, a keynote speaker at the event, spoke on the theme: “Restructuring, True Federalism and Resource Control: Panacea for Enduring Peace and Sustainable Development in Nigeria.”
“I attended the 1986/87 Babangida’s constitutional conference; I also attended the 1994/95 Abacha conference. I also attended the political reform conference of Obasanjo,” Mr. Abdullahi said.
“The only conference I refused to attend was the Jonathan conference. I call it Jonathan conference. I do not hide my feelings on that for obvious reasons.
“All the conferences I attended were conferences where delegates were elected from their various constituencies, and they gave the feeling that they were representing people from their various constituencies. That was the different from Jonathan’s conference,” he said.
He said the delegates should have been elected.
“This was not done and that was why most of us declined to attend,” he said.
Mr. Abdullahi said his decision to seek the change of resource control to resource management was because the country’s founding fathers judiciously managed the meager resources available to them for the development of the country up to the time of independence.
“You will agree with me that during the time of our founding fathers, Azikiwe, Awolowo, Sarduna of Sokoto, they never had the volume of resources that is available for Nigeria today,” he said.
“But I can tell you that those our founding fathers managed the resources, these very scarce resources, to achieve so much for this country up till independence.”
