Ebenezer is there to drive through the ideas of the best Nigerian political administrator and technocrat in history in the person of Obafemi Awolowo.

Though he (Ebenezer) may have strayed momentarily in politics, and apparently for filthy lucre sake, but if those political ideas of Awolowo, especially on federalism, which he robustly entertained, imbibed and canvassed yesteryears are still intact then what a great pick! So then, we want to see his Ebinotopsy lines or Awoist days reflected in that Committee. We mean that let no wads of international currencies tamper with Ebenezer’s tongue and or rubbish the good position of the conscience.

We see Oladepo Afolabi effectively representing the South-West with Ebenezer. A political system that has apparently held his region standstill until all other regions catch up with it must be his pensive and brooding concern; and if he has any strong bent for true federalism it can be understood.

But he must not forget to be a robust part of a political process that will make our politicians not to continue to prey on the civil service he recently headed. He has a rare political platform now to help turn things around in the civil service.

In Oladepo the civil service must have a voice in that Committee. At the end of the day we want to see a civil service that is working, resourceful, result-oriented and not cannon fodder of corrupt politicians. He must not leave this good effort alone to Labor representatives in that Committee.

Saro Wiwa, nay, Ledun Mitee, leads the South-South pair in the Committee. Many have sold out in the South-South. History is replete with them. Will Ledun? Ledun has always been there for the Niger Delta and by extension for Nigeria. He represents the good of the region which translates to the good of the country.

He knows that when it is well with the goose that lays the national eggs then it will be well with this amalgamated tribes and tongues. This is Ledun. This was Ken Saro-Wiwa. This is many of us who have written our pens dry on the Niger Delta question.

The Niger Delta question is actually a national question. Until we get this right we get it all wrong. Since pre-colonial days this has been the perceived fact.

Belgore’s Committee will soon find this so. And we trust Ledun will properly guide it; but he must stay out of all traditional lures that have made our representatives sell out hitherto. With him to present a common ground is Tessy Ikimi; a material OBJ also deemed fit to be a member of one of his then committees.

Jerry Gana the wordsmith is there. All the articulation needed to argue Nigeria’s way to a commonly acceptable path and so to the ‘Promised Land’ are not wanting in him.

IBB it was who took him from the ivory tower and rolled him into the national political scene as MAMSER helmsman and his wheels have not rolled back since then, except when he corked his political steam with Umaru Yar’Adua’s government apparently because OBJ scuttled his dream of becoming the number one citizen.

But having served in that national grass-root organ (MAMSER) and severally as Information Adviser/Minister very few people should know Nigeria better than Jerry. He is a choice pick and many ways fitted for this very important national assignment. My grouse with him is not related to the issue at hand, and that has to do with how he or his then office supervised the near demise of The Guardian newspaper under Abacha’s regime. That is one dent on a man with great appeal; an infraction of his ordinarily lively conscience which here represents a disturbing parenthesis to this piece.

Take that away, Jerry has reared up as a model of some sort and he sure has ingenuity on his side to unknot many a Nigerian problem. Not to forget that G.O. S. Miri pairs with him in the fireworks that would likely see North-Central surging away from the puppetry role it has played over time.

Anya .O. Anya, a Hope Waddell Training Institute alumnus, Professor of Zoology, economic guru by any standard, great university administrator, one of Africa’s leading scholars and a man who has variously answered national clarion calls to firm up various aspects of our national governance, pairs with Chukwuemeka Ezeife to represent the South-East. Ezeife attended Harvard University on a Rockefeller Foundation scholarship where he obtained a Masters and PhD degrees.

The former school headmaster, lecturer at the prestigious Makarere University College, Kampala, Teaching Fellow at Harvard University, Consultant with Arthur D. Little in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Permanent Secretary, Governor and Presidential Adviser on Political Matters to President Olusegun Obasanjo, Ezeife has long carried the burden of his exploited and alienated people: Ndigbo.

Now he has the best vent. If there is any region so gifted, and that can make it without the rest of us, this is it. Yet, if there is any region that has known humiliation, alienation, subjugation, this is it!

Yet, if there are any people that have paid the greatest price in this country, this is it. And if there are any pair that know these things more than any of us and have been articulating them all along, it is Anya and Chukuemeka; Anya systematic and tactful, Chukwuemeka pointblank and nail-on-the-head.

Mr. CHRIS  OKONKWO, a commentator on national issues, wrote from Warri, Delta State.