Thursday 10 April 2014

Day 12: My National Conference Exploits...

(Tuesday 8th April 2014) started a tad frenzied. A delegate after amendment of votes and proceedings of the previous day protested about something he read in the papers earlier that morning that delegates' feeding allowance per plate each day is N60,000. He demanded the secretariat explain to the house how much exactly is the cost per plate per delegate as this is image denting to say delegates eat N60,000 food per person. The Deputy Chairman in his calm and wise words explained that the budget for each delegate is N4000 and even at that, the caterers are complaining that lthe money is less considering the number of delegates and are battling to sort things out with them. "N60,000 per plate is absolute lie he added".

 

What don’t media carry though...N60,000 per plate? This is someone’s salary for goodness sake. Well, N4,000 is equally another’s salary too. Irony of life!



The three 3-minutes session is still ongoing but I am sincerely bored and barely kept record except for some really interesting, funny or very uninteresting submissions. 


A controversial Emir from the North East Nigeria dropped the bomb at the conference yet again. He said some people have started jumping the gun on resource control, resource ownership among other agitations. So I will like to jump the gun today tooLet states which don’t have oil allow states who have oil to take a 100% oil revenue and states who don’t have oil to take 100% land resource - that means ownership of land should revert to those states and anybody who wants to use the land or the structures of the land must pay rent to those states or traditional owners of the land."


He continued "As for traditional rulers, I don’t support the idea or opinion to give us any role in the constitution. Our roles are conventional similar to the British constitution but what traditional rulers want is recognition. However, there is a need for National traditional council of Nigeria whose membership would be 3 traditional rulers in each state including the president of the traditional rulers council in that state. The other day I heard an ethnic nationality delegate saying his people are marginalized because a district head is appointed from an area which his people don’t support. 


The Emir concluded by saying "My Chairman, we should not listen to this ethnic chauvinist because if we agree with their argument we would end up in a situation in this country where EVERY ethnic group will demand for their President, Governor, Emir, Oba, Obi, Minister and even Chairmen of their Local Government."

 

The first three lines of this speech (the resource control) seemed like what majority of the house was waiting to hear - a lot of YES YES YES……


A delegate close to the ending of the session also brought up a burning issue about N12 million delegates' pay, saying we have been reading on Newspapers that delegates collect this and that. Please the secretariat should come out straight and tell the public how much exactly is the take home of each delegate since there is nothing to hide. The Chairman said he is not privy to such info but the person in charge of finance will come tomorrow and explain to the house.

 

At some minutes past 6pm we closed for the day…


Oops! Have I told you the Deputy Chairman National conference said he admired my speech and he is highly impressed by my talent? Oh well who says only Jonathan gets praises here? LOL!

 

See you soon…..


On Twitter: @Yadomah...

 


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