BY SONI DANIEL, CLIFFORD NJUDIHE, GAB EJUWA & GODWIN ORITSE

AS delegates to the National Conference get set to begin deliberations on Monday, the Federal Government has ruled out the possibility of providing the members with official cars and other perks of office.

In place of official vehicles, Vanguard learnt from a Presidency source that the government had decided to convert such pecks to cash and pay to the delegates and confab secretariat officials.

Findings by Vanguard indicated that each delegate may get as much as N30,000 for transportation, refreshments and meals per day of sitting.  Other incentives for participating in the conference such as medicals may also be monetised.

An inside source said the Federal Government had decided to apply the monetisation policy to safe cost and reduce waste associated with using government facilities to run programmes.

The source explained that the government had learnt lessons from the mismanagement of the cars and other facilities acquired by the government for hosting  COJA in 2003.

“We don’t want to drag the administration into endless expenditure and repairs of cars and facilities, which could be misused once they are being paid for by the government,” the source said.

It also emerged that the renovation work at the International Conference Centre, ICC, might force the government to hold the confab at the National Judicial Institute, NJI, along Umaru Musa Yar’Adua Way.

The government has already decided to pay cash in respect of accommodation to the delegates instead of keeping them in hotels.

This came as mixed views continued to trail the necessity or otherwise of holding the conference now and whether it could address the country’s numerous challenges.

Confab too close to 2015 polls –Eferakeya

Sharing his thoughts on the confab, Senator  Adego Eferakeya said: “The timing of the national conference is too close to the 2015 general election. People should think ahead in the way they plan. Are they going to arrive at decisions and hang them somewhere? Will INEC not be affected in some of the decisions they will take at the national conference? The North and South dichotomy is there. The North has its agenda, the South also has its agenda. Recently the South had its meeting in Calabar; the North is also having its meetings, all with different agenda. I do not want to be pessimistic. I just hope that something good will come out of it. You know that the underlining factor in the conference is resource control.”

We must jettison no-go-area –Ogboru

Also speaking, former Delta State governorship candidate and leader of the Democratic Peoples Party (DPP), Chief Great Ogboru, said the exercise must not be made another mere talk shop because the mood of the country today would not permit a talk shop for the sake of it.”