TheNewsDesk
3rd December, 2023
A former Vice-Chancellor, Abia State University, Uturu, Prof. Mkpa Agu Mkpa has urged President Bola Tinubu and the National Assembly to revisit the report of the 2014 Constitutional Conference as it addressed most of the challenges of the country’s development.
He noted that the recommendations of the conference, if implemented, could accelerate the “tempo of our nation-building efforts.”
Mkpa stated this in Abuja on Wednesday while delivering a keynote lecture of the 3rd annual public lecture series, induction and conferment of honorary doctorate of the African School of Diplomacy and International Relations.
The event, with the theme “The Political Economy of Nation-Building: The World’s Unfinished Business,” was organised in collaboration with Queen’s University Belfast, United Kingdom (UK).
He said: “That conference made landmark recommendations which, had they been implemented, could have accelerated the tempo of our nation-building efforts.”
Mkpa noted that the country’s path to nation-building could become a mirage if individuals are stronger than institutions.
He said military coups in some African countries are the “effect of unfinished business of nation-building in those countries and Nigerian leaders should use the 2014 Constitutional Conference report to normalise things.”
He said: “One of the most near-successful efforts in Nigeria’s history of nation-building, that would have arrested most, if not all the stumbling blocks towards the nation’s unsteady march towards nation-building was the national conferences of 2014.
“The recommendation addressed the critical obstacles to nation-building which include devolution of power, creation of state police, resource control, electoral reform, youth empowerment and fear of domination of any ethnic group.
