Day 31: My National Conference Exploits

Monday 26th May 2014, proceeding started at exactly 9.05 am.

 

Amendments were made on the votes and proceedings of the previous day and adopted as amended.

 

Announcement:

 

The Chairman announced that there will be no sitting on Thursday 29th May 2014, because it will be Democracy Day; the Deputy Chair manannounced that a delegate, Chief Edwin Clark celebrated his 87th birthday on the 25th May - As If we all care!

 

Then the Deputy Chair announced the names of 16 people to go help sort out the pending issue of Land Use Act which was proposed to be expunged by the Committee on land tenure but decision was not reached because of lack of consensus - as reported in the previous blog post.

 

Committees that had not laid their reports did so such as the  Committee on Transport.

 

We then began discussing the report of my committee - Environment. Everyone seem to commend us for a job well done; some came with some criticism but some others were supporting recommendations made.

 

There was a heated debate and disagreements on the issue of “Resource Democracy” which was part of our recommendations; it meant each state and /or community to have a sense of ownership oftheir resource(s), some said we tried to smuggle in “Resource Control”; and that generated a lot of controversy.

 

Even those that were for it, who actually thought it is about Resource Control, were absolutely wrong.

 

Well, amendments were made to our committee report as well as recommendations- I didn't expect people will have so much interest in our report - partly because of the glaring ignorance of most Nigerians on issues of the Environment and the lack of awareness on Environmental issues and concerns. But to my greatest surprise so many showed interest, so many approached me appreciating the work of my committee and confessed that they have learned a lot from it.

 

After recommendations were made and additional recommendations were put to vote and nays and yeas were said, and after throats have dried up and bones had became tired, we adjourned at 6.18 pm to resume the following day .