Former President Goodluck Jonathan said on Friday, July 12, 2019, It is high time the nation set aside political differences to implement the 2014 national confab which his administration convened.
He said his government could not implement the recommendations of the confab because of time constraint as the 2015 electioneering had reached its peak.
Jonathan spoke in Lagos during the public presentation of a 669-page book, titled: “The Dream: Pursuing the Black Renaissance through the Murky Waters of Nigerian Politics,” written by a notable politician, Femi Okurounmu.
He praised the institutionalization of the appointment of chairman and members of the Independent National Electoral Commission to give more credibility to the elections conducted by the commission.
He said most of the problems facing the country would be addressed if the 2014 confab report was implemented. “I believe the constitutional conference will solve our immediate challenges.”
”My administration was prepared to change the narrative of our constitutional democracy with the assurance that sovereignty belongs to the people. However, we were time-constrained.”
The conference was conducted one year to the end of my tenure. We did not have the time, even the National Assembly which supposed to validate the report was busy with political survival. “I did not insist on rushed implementation because my administration did not set out to achieve political popularity but to genuinely advance the course of nation-building.”
