The National Dialogue roadshow was invaded by thugs in Edo state, as Governor Oshiomhole made his speech.
It started when Governor Oshiomhole began to speak after Isoko, Urhobo, Itsekiri and Bini representatives had made their presentations.
A voice said” “Two minutes”.
“I will do more than that,” Oshiomhole replied.
The governor continued: “I want to make my own comments. They are my views and not the views of Edo State. It is not the view of any particular ethnic nationality. I think as a Nigerian we all have stake in this country and we have a duty to lay a solid foundation for the future of this country. I have a duty to be honest and truthful on the views and position that I canvass. My views are different. I asked the question, why are we having a national conference?”
“I believe that anyone who convenes a meeting must be clear why he convened a meeting. I have the opportunity to travel far and wide. You don’t assemble people and then ask them, what do we talk?. Whoever wishes to convene a meeting must be clear on what the issues are. When you have stated why the meeting was convened, you can then ask what should be added or deleted. You have hundreds of agenda. When I was the NLC, a former president convened a national conference and up till now…
Another interruption. Oshiomhole said: “You cannot shout me down. I know some persons were hired to be here.”
He went on: “People from various states converged, money was spent and in the end I can’t remember what came out of that conference. It is a valid point to make that we failed before, we can make amend but it is important we learn from our history. I will be surprised if anything changes. As a leader, I have no business to mislead anyone. This conference will not be different from any previous conference.”
Thugs from Delta and Bayelsa were reportedly there to interrupt the Governor’s speech as he is known to be against the National Dialogue exercise.
A member of the committee Col. Tony Nyiam stood up and began banging the table, screaming “No!” in order to cut Oshiomhole off. At this point a retinue of thugs began to get violent and Oshiomhole hurriedly made his exit.
Oshiomhole had during a courtesy call on him in his office by members of the committee led by the Chairman, Femi Okurounmu, said he had no faith in the whole process.
“All I owe Nigeria now is to speak my mind. It could be error of my head but certainly not of my heart. As much as I wish you well, I just want to say that I have no faith in this process and I do not think it was necessary at all,” Oshiomhole said.
He added: “I am unable to find any basis to give me some illusion that this exercise will be different from the others. And I honestly think that in terms of the private sector, when a country keeps debating how we can live together that cannot be one of the basis on which the outside community will invest in Nigeria.
“They may well wait until we know how we want to live in Nigeria.”
He lamented that 53 years after Independence, Nigerians still prefer to look at themselves from their ethnic origin rather than being Nigerians, saying, “For me, I am just a Nigerian.”
“I do not think that more than hundred years when we have set aside billions of naira to celebrate centenary, celebrating the fact of the amalgamation of Northern and Southern Nigeria, and we have lived together as one country for over a hundred years, and we have gone through independence, we have been free for 53 years and we are coming back to ask the question, how could we be there.
“I think Nigeria needs to address very serious issues. When I see eminent Nigerians discussing this issue, I am sure they know that Nigeria’s problem is not this politics of sharing which the national dialogue is all about; who is getting what, who has this natural endowment, who should do this or not do this.
“For me this is the act of perfecting poverty.
“The real challenge is getting Nigeria back to production. The real challenge is creating industrial base and this cannot be resolved through conferences.
“We have moved from Parliamentary system in our own wisdom to the Presidential system. We have test-run it and it was aborted by the military and it has re-incarnated in the present form.
“Nigeria does need a serious reflection about how to return to those core values that made Nigeria work before.
“Those healthy competitions between the governments, visit the whole question of attitude and unless that changes, I do not see how any dialogue can work,” he said.
The Governor also recounted: “I was discussing with somebody last week and he noted that this is the eleventh conference and I ask what ten conferences could not do, how would the eleventh one do it?
“Why do we think we can continue doing the same thing the same old way and think that this time the outcome would be different?”
The Governor said nobody convenes a meeting without stating an agenda and asking others to draw up an agenda for that meeting.
“From conception we know we want to talk but we do not know what we want to talk about,” he said.