National Confab: You must listen to all views, Fashola tells committee

National Confab: You must listen to all
views, Fashola tells committee
on november 02, 2013 at 1:13 am in news
By Olasunkanmi Akoni & Monsur Olowoopejo
Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos state
yesterday tasked the Presidential Advisory
Committee on National conference/Dialogue to
desist from shunning the opinion of Nigerians who
believe that the conference wouldn’t do the country
any good, saying “We must expect to hear from
those that we like and from those that we don’t
like.”
This came barely a week after the outburst
between Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State
and a member of the committee, Col Tony Nyiam
(rtd), during the panel’s sitting in Benin, Edo State.
Fashola, who made the appeal when the committee
paid him a courtesy visit  further advised the
committee to adopt the report submitted on the
2005 National Political Reform Conference under the
Obasanjo’s administration but should remove the
tenure elongation agenda in it.
Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos state
The governor said “When we held a constitutional
conference in 2006, many areas were vigorously
and passionately defended, compromised and
agreed.I knew the negotiations and compromises
that were made there; there were some things that
were agreed, and there were some things that were
not agreed, but everything was going down with a
very disagreeable matter of tenure elongation came
up.
So if let us go back and you know those places that
we have agreed, we can put those forward and look
at a legal framework; you have a learned team, let
us implement the agreement first, we can come
back to the disputed areas later because at the end
of the day in my own view, and I have argued it
before, it seems that we sometimes approximate
the expectations of our people for a desire for a
new constitution. And I have made the point and I
would repeat it that our people do not want a better
document, they want a better life and a constitution
by itself will not give a better life.”
Speaking earlier, Okurounmu said:  “This is what
the citizens of the South West of the country had
been agitating for in the last few years. And we are
happy with the response we have received from the
public. From our visit to the zones, it showed that
Nigerians are interested in discussing issues that
affect them. And they did this by expressing
themselves during all the stakeholders’ forum we
have held. I can assure Nigerians that we will not let
them down.”