Election May Not Hold In Nigeria In 2015..Tony Uranta

Elections in Nigeria in 2015 will not hold if the National Conference does not make “substantial conclusions” before then, a prominent social commentator and member of the Presidential Advisory Committee on National Conference, Tony Uranta, has said.

Tony Uranta

Uranta, believed to be close to the presidency, made the declaration Thursday at an event organised by the Gani Adams-led Oodua Peoples Congress to mark the 21st anniversary of the cancellation of the 12 June, 1993 presidential election won by the late Moshood Abiola.

The analyst, while reacting to the theme of the event, ‘June 12, A Solution Model For 2015 Electoral Challenges’, further said there would be no election in the country in 2015 if the country does not succeed in creating a new constitution for itself.

“I am aware that the theme of today’s lecture revolves around the 2015 elections…but permit me to inform you that there will be no 2015 elections if there is no substantial conclusion of the National Conference.

“If the National Conference continues on the path it seems to have started taking, the path where certain delegates from certain spheres of Nigeria are disregarded, where positions and ideas are laughed and mocked at and waved aside…if we do not succeed in creating a brand new constitution for this country, if we do not bring about a fully holistic and thorough re-engineering of this nation, we shall not see 2015 as one country.

“This is not a doomsday prophecy, this is just being pragmatic.”

Uranta also said it was a ruse to think that the Boko Haram insurgency is only a northern affair, arguing that though it may be manifesting at the moment in the northeast, “Boko Haram is insecurity, period! It is terrorism.

“Why is there Boko Haram? It is because of the lopsidedness of the structure of this country.”

He argued that the election of 1993 was not so much because Nigerians loved Abiola or because former dictator Ibrahim Babangida was the best organiser, but that it was because Nigerians were united in their determination to remove the military at that time.

“Now, we also must unite in our determination to restructure this country,” he told the crowd.

Uranta said he was proud of the OPC and Otunba Gani Adams, adding that the Ijaw part of Nigeria, where he hails from, had copied some of the operations of the group.

He said the OPC, through Gani Adams, is now an organised system sensitising the people of Yorubaland and bringing the power needed by the area.

“It is time for you to start insisting and being heard as insisting that certain things must be done right and certain things must not be accepted. If your leaders are insulted or mistreated at the National Conference and you see it, get up and say so.

“I do not love a situation where Ayo Adebanjo is told to sit down as if he is a Form One boy whereas a Lamido of Adamawa is allowed to ramble on for hours. It is not equity.

“The OPC was born out of the resistance to injustice and we must always remember that,” he charged the Yoruba group.