PRESIDENT Goodluck Jonathan has submitted the 2014 National Conference report to the Senate for consideration and legislative action just as day before leaving office.
Between March and August last year, a total of 492 delegates met in Abuja where they brainstormed at a summit designed to find a way of addressing the country's plethora of socio-economic woes. Among the contentious issues they debated are how to share the nation's oil wealth and to examine the way Nigeria is governed.
Recommendations from the National Conference included several controversial issues such as resource control, which split delegates along regional lines. Its report was submitted to President Jonathan on August 21 by the committee chairman, Justice Idris Kutigi, who has in turn forwarded it to the senate.
Although it was expected that President Jonathan would forward the report of the conference to the National Assembly in form of and executive bill, he only sent a letter to the senate through the Senate President David Mark, for considerations and legislative action. With the outgoing senate unlikely to get round to debating the bill before leaving office, it will be up to the new senate to discuss and deliberate upon it.
In his letter titled Approval for the implementation of the recommendations and resolutions of the National Conference 2014, President Jonathan said that the Federal Executive Council had in its meeting on March 18, 2015, considered and approved the reports of the conference. It is not clear what president-elect General Muhammadu Buhari's reaction to the report is as his party did not participate in the conference.
General Buhari's All Progressives Congress (APC) refused to send delegates to the summit and has not commented on any of its recommendations. During the course of the election campaigns, neither General Buhari nor any of the APC leaders mentioned the National Conference report.
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