N’Assembly ’ll frustrate national dialogue – Bishop Peter Adebiyi

Bishop Peter Adebiyi

The Bishop of the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion), Lagos-West Diocese, Rt. Rev. Peter Adebiyi (retd.), has faulted the plan by President Goodluck Jonathan to send the outcome of the proposed national conference to the National Assembly.

He said the federal lawmakers posed a challenge to Nigeria and were not eligible to address the problems facing the country.

Adebiyi, while speaking on the state of the nation in Lagos on Tuesday, said those who had been part of Nigeria’s problems should not be allowed to be part of the solution providers.

He said the resolution of the proposed conference might suffer a setback, where the position of the conference was not favourable to the lawmakers at the National Assembly.

Adebiyi said, “I know that the National Assembly – the politicians – are 95 per cent part of the problem of this country. And if they are the problem, they cannot solve the problems themselves.

“What if we say this is the way we are going and they know that it cannot augur well with them. Are they not the same set of people who earn a lot of money in the national and state assemblies but cannot pay N18, 000 (minimum wage) to workers?

“If they know that they are not going to get all these things (allowances) with the kind of structure we want to make, definitely, they will scuttle it. They will not make it work.”

He said the previous conferences failed because the governments that convoked them had ulterior motives.

He alleged that the Federal Government had its agenda in the 2006 conference, which was opposed by participants. He said the refusal led to the indefinite suspension of the process.

Adebiyi said, “In 2006, it was the political conference that we had in Abuja. I was a member, representing the whole of Christians in the Western zone. We were there for about six weeks and it ended abruptly, when some agenda were slipped into our rooms.

“We saw the agenda and said ‘this is not part of what we have come to do.’ And then, what we heard the following day was the chairman who announced that the political forum had been adjourned. It was adjourned forever. We were sent home. Till today, there is nothing we have heard about it.”