Conference leadership cautions delegates over choice of word during debate

The conference says words such as genocide could attract international probe

The leadership of the National Conference has cautioned delegates on their choice of words during debates so as to avoid attracting negative international attention to Nigeria.

The Deputy Chairman of the Conference, Bolaji Akinyemi, who stated this in his closing remarks at Wednesday’s plenary session, said the use of emotive words like ‘genocide, ‘mass killing’ and others could such send the wrong signal to the international community.

Mr. Akinyemi, a former Foreign Affairs Minister, who reminded the delegates that a Nigerian now heads the Security Council of the United Nations, said employing some emotive words could easily activate the International Court of Justice, ICJ, to investigate such claims.

Stating that there were about four former foreign ministers, including himself at the conference, the deputy chairman said while it was true that some delegates were using such words to drive home their points, especially about the groups they represented, there were some other ways they could do that without bringing Nigeria into
disrepute.

“Let us be conscious of the word so that we don’t can activate the international court to have an interest to come and investigate,” he said.

He said he was not belittling the problems the delegates brought to the Conference, but that in expressing their frustrations there were other words “we can use which cannot get us into trouble or get us being accused of committing international crime.”

He recounted his last assignment as member of the Presidential Committee on the Peaceful Resolution of the Security Challenges in Northern Nigeria for seven months, and said he would not want any of the delegates to see the kind of people he saw during the assignment.

He said, “In the last seven months of my former assignment, I pray you don’t see the kind of people I saw. I am not belittling the problems of this country.”

The Chairman, Idris Kutigi, while summarising his deputy’s counsel, said “we should choose the appropriate words.”

Garden-City Boy

That, exactly, is the kernel of problem with Nigerian, the root of the evil it represents. We easily form consensus when it comes to the concealment of the opprobrium that has become cultural. We love to brew it under the thick blanket of conspiratorial secrecy. And we don’t even need up to 5% consensus for adoption. It is as bad as that. Perhaps, Bolaji Akinyemi is fids it convenient to deny that the Nigeria we have today is built on genocide, on the blood of 3 million Igbo people murdered by the Nigerian state. In his considered opinion, we must do or say nothing to remind ourselves that Odi people were wiped out by Nigerian troops on the orders of a Nigeria’s president.
The Zaki Bian massacre did not happen, nor did Ogoni. Fulanis have made burn-fires of hundreds of Beroms in Plateau State. And as we speak, notoriously barbaric islamists are on a long drawn killing spree, and we are to either pretend to ourselves that there is no genocide, or engage in meticulous verbal cherry-picking to re-launch a Nigeria. May be Prof. Akinyemi should distribute pocket dictionaries of his preferred words for use at the National Conference, to include synonyms for “KILL”, “MASSACRE”, WIPED OUT”, POGROM”, GENOCIDE”, “SLAUGHTER” and all other such words he does would have voiced in the conference floor. We then pick and chose from those to avoid the risk of upsetting Nigeria’s vicious butchers. It will gravely hurt Prof. Akinyemi’s reputation and credibility should he resist detachment from the mindset of the ex-ministerial appointee of some of those butchers.
Clearly, it is rather disappointing that Bolaji Akinyemi should be the one to exhort conference delegates to be insincere in their expressions, mince words and be, all with the aim to shield “eminent” Nigerians who acted with naked impunity, presided over human rights abuses, and more than deserved to be punished for their savage crimes. It amounts a betrayal of those victims of state genocide, proving that as far as the system is concerned, closure to the pains this country put them through its blood drenched past is totally off the table.
Yet, this is a forum that seeks to resolved age-long differences that made Nigeria dysfunctional, fragmented and polarized. But, here we are, battling to save criminals from the International Criminal Court instead……. by our “CHOICE OF WORDS and USE OF LANGUAGE”….. to re-invent a Nigeria. In That case, critics who dubbed the exercise a wild goose chase, an ATM or a jamboree may be right, after all.