By  SIMON EBEGBULEM
THE President of the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA), Joseph Daudu (SAN) and the Minister of Information, Labaran Maku, yesterday, disagreed on the issues bedeviling the nation at the 7th Nigeria Guild of Editors Conference in Benin City.

While the NBA boss attributed the issue of insecurity, poverty and unemployment to the failure of good leadership, the Minister said Nigerians and not only government must be held responsible, just as he also attributed the problems to what he described as historical problems of politicians in the First Republic.

However, Daudu (SAN) warned that if the issues of corruption, Jos Crisis, Boko Haram, Niger Delta crisis and other problems bedeviling the nation are left unchecked, there is the possibility that the nation may disintegrate sooner than later.

The NBA boss who spoke yesterday while delivering a paper entitled “ Danger Signals to Nigeria’s Democracy”, at the 7th Nigeria Guild of Editors Conference in Benin City, noted that the Jos crisis had exposed the fragility of Nigeria in terms of not only structure and the unity but in the clear unwillingness of leadership to confront the problems globally.

According to him, the Jos crisis brings to the fore the question of the rights of a Nigerian in his own country. “The problem is that settlers in Jos are not regarded as indigenes and they therefore are accorded secondary rights. Millions of Nigerians have been exposed to this treatment in a number of states in this country.

“But as we speak, both the federal government and the state government are not on top of the situation. The solution has been excessive killing to restore peace. Even now, a major general has be assigned by the Federal Government to keep peace.

It has not worked in the past and so it is not likely to work given the present circumstances.

“The danger signal of our democracy by this type of activities and the non concomitant inability or reluctance of government to bring perpetrators of such divisive activity to book is that law and order is deemed to have broken down. The failure of justice has grave economic and political repercussions for such a society.

“The weaknesses of the 1999 constitution are daily being exposed. Boko Haram is mentioned because of the dimension that has been introduced into this country by terrorism anchored on religious platform. There have been numerous religious crisis in the past that have rocked the nation to its foundation but not phenomena has ever taken the nation to the extent that the Boko Haram brand of terrorism has.

“Taken together all these problems, they portend great danger to the ship of state. It shows that the structures or machinery of government are weak and unable to guarantee the constitutional minimum of peace, order and good governance.

The essence of examining the danger signals to Nigeria’s democracy through these incidences is to graphically demonstrate the underlying causes of the threat to the unity and indeed existence of Nigeria” he stated.

However, the Minister who responded during his speech, “All of us are guilty of whatever we are suffering. My understanding of the Nigerian politics is that if you look at the 19961 elections, those elections were held basically on regional platform and as a result there were many competitions between one region or the other. Those centrifugal forces that were in built into the first republic created the distrust, the lack of coercion and the crisis that engulfed the country by 1966.

“There is no heterogeneous country in the world that runs a democracy that is stable and runs an election that is stable without a holistic national elite. And I think one of the major problem of Nigeria is that we don’t have a holistic national elite. Nigerians are either thinking as tribes men or religious people. We are not thinking like people that are running a nation that is diverse and which leadership must rise above the division and give the people leadership.

“ Now we can’t continue like this. Let me now say clearly here, that if we as a nation must move forward, there are certain things that must happen. The first thing that must happen is that we at the level of the political elite must rethink with our past and have a new future because our thoughts as religious people and tribes will not help Nigeria. They grew beyond the tribe and religion in South Africa to be great today. Today we have the challenge.

“If Democracy will work and democracy is working, we must agree that the Nigeria of yesterday was not the kind of Nigeria that will lead us into the future.

But I think we have a fundamental shift. The 2011 election in Nigeria counted more than any election in the country. Why was it so, because we had a new generation President who does not believe on the crisis of the past but who decided that we want a new thing. And he appointed Jega a radical.

And if you look, children of former leaders in this country lost in the election. Some of the problems we are experiencing are historical problems not necessarily leadership and we must stop them to move forward. And as it is today our democracy is moving forward and progressing” he stated.