The 2014 National Conference—popularly known as CONFAB 2014—was convened by President Goodluck Jonathan and inaugurated on 17 March 2014 at the National Judicial Institute, Abuja. It was presided over by former Chief Justice of Nigeria Justice Idris Legbo Kutigi as Chairman, with Senator Femi Okurounmu as Deputy Chairman. The 492 delegates—drawn from all thirty-six states and the FCT, representing geopolitical zones, professional bodies, women's groups, youths, traditional institutions, the private sector, and political parties—constituted the largest representative national assembly convened in Nigeria since the 1994–95 Abacha constitutional conference. The mandate was to deliberate on contentious national questions and produce a draft framework that could inform constitutional revision.
The Conference sat for five months across twenty committees covering devolution and power sharing, revenue allocation, political restructuring, security, the economy, gender, and foreign affairs. Its final report—compiled in three volumes and officially presented to President Jonathan on 9 August 2014—contained over 600 resolutions. Among the most significant: increase in derivation revenue from 13% to 18% for oil-producing states; devolution of additional items from the Exclusive to the Concurrent Legislative List, including railways, electricity generation, and prisons; creation of state police forces; restructuring of the federal character formula; six-year single-term presidency; a rotation of the presidency across geopolitical zones; and specific constitutional protections for the rights of women and persons with disabilities. The Conference also resolved that the report should be adopted by the National Assembly as the basis for a new constitution.
The report was formally published by the government. However, Jonathan admitted in June 2022 that he had declined to send the report to the National Assembly before the February 2015 elections because he was confident of re-election and planned to implement it in a second term. His defeat to Muhammadu Buhari rendered the report politically stranded. Buhari's government, which had opposed the conference as a wasteful distraction, ignored the report entirely. Subsequent administrations under Buhari periodically invoked it in discussions of restructuring but took no legislative action. As of 2024, the report remains the most comprehensive convergence of Nigerian elite and popular opinion on constitutional reform, yet wholly unimplemented.