By Omoniyi Salaudeen and Daniel Kanu
For the umpteenth time, the much-debated issue about the imperative or otherwise of a new constitution for Nigeria has again been placed on the front burner following the recent visit of The Patriots, a group of eminent statesmen, to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in Aso Rock Villa, Abuja.
Over the years, the existing 1999 Constitution has been roundly criticized for its inherent flaws. However, despite its imperfection, successive governments have resisted the clamour for a new constitution that can guarantee socio-economic and political stability for the country.
As such, its evolutionary process towards genuine nationhood has been dogged by ethno-religious suspicions, separatist agitations, civil unrest, and undue competition for power at the centre.
These have made it impossible for the country to achieve its potential for greatness among the comity of nations.
Following the recent #EndBadGovernance protests in several states of the federation and the consequential loss of lives and property, The Patriots led by the former Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, renewed the call for a revisit of the present constitution to stave off glaring imminent dangers.
Anyaoku, who spoke on behalf of the group after the meeting with President Tinubu, maintained that Nigeria needed a people’s democratically evolved constitution to manage its diversity.
He said: “Nigeria, we affirmed to Mr. President, is a pluralistic country, and you know that pluralistic countries exist all over the world.
“Those of them that address their pluralism by having true federal constitutions have survived. The examples are India and Canada.
“But those pluralistic countries that failed to address their basic challenge of pluralism through federal constitution have ended up disintegrating. Examples of that are Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. And here in Africa, Sudan.”
He noted that Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia existed for as many as 100 years as one country, but eventually disintegrated because they could not manage their pluralism through a truly federal constitution.
To make the best out of the bad situation in which Nigeria has found itself, The Patriots urged President Tinubu to “send an executive bill to the National Assembly; a bill that will call for two essential measures.
“One, the convening of a National Constituent Assembly to be mandated to produce a new draft constitution.
“And we suggested that such National Constituent Assembly should consist of individuals elected by the people on non-party basis.
“And we put some proposals to Mr. President and urged him; say, for example, three individuals per state, each of the 36 states, and one from the Federal Capital Territory.”
He added that “the draft constitution to emerge from the Constituent Assembly should be subjected to the national referendum to give the people of Nigeria a chance to determine their new constitution.”
Since then, the media have been inundated with debates among the various stakeholders as to the desirability or otherwise of a new constitution.
On the one hand, some argued that dissipating energy on a new constitution will be a waste of time and resources given that many constitutional conferences have been held in the past, but the documents emanating from them have been abandoned by the successive governments. According to this school of thought, all that is required to perfect the flawed constitution is a revisit of the reports of the previous conferences and the faithful implementation of the recommendations.
A renowned Second Republic politician and an elder statesman from Kano, Alhaji Tanko Yakasai, speaking with Sunday Sun, re-echoed this argument, urging President Tinubu to disregard the renewed call for a new constitution.
His words: “I am not in support of a new constitutional conference because we have had so many constitutional conferences. What I want Tinubu to do is look for the reports of the previous conferences and take action on recommendations that have not been implemented. We can’t be holding conferences all the time. I took part in two out of the past conferences. My opinion is that Tinubu should look at the reports of those conferences and implement any aspect that has not been implemented.”
Alongside these individuals, however, is another school of thought that aligned with the position of The Patriots to have an entirely new constitution to guarantee a peaceful co-existence among the diverse ethnic nationalities.
A renowned constitutional lawyer and Human Rights activist, Dr Tunji Abayomi, shared his thoughts with Sunday Sun on the imperative of a new people’s constitution.
He weighed in on the position of The Patriots, saying that only a return to the federal constitution operated at independence can effectively manage the country’s diversity.
“If our diversity was working at independence, definitely, a return to the federalist Constitution would work for us. I think that is the position of The Patriots,” Abayomi said.
Without a new constitution, he maintained, “there will continue to be agitation and crisis in the country because the present constitution didn’t take into consideration the peculiarity of our nation.
“By the composition of Nigeria, the present constitution is inappropriate for the unity of different ethnic nationalities that make up the country. We have to sit down and agree on how we want to live together.
“At independence in 1960, we had a constitution that allowed each region to run its affairs, but the military destroyed it and imposed another constitution that was largely unitary where the central government took virtually everything.
“And since the present constitution wasn’t negotiated and agreed upon by the people of Nigeria, the only sensible way is for the people to sit round the table and agree on the way to run the country. What the people agreed upon at independence was a federalist Constitution where our diversity was taken into consideration and we were moving very well. There was healthy rivalry.
“I have been consistently saying it that Nigeria does not have a constitution because it is not a government that gives a nation a constitution. It is the constitution that gives a nation a government. And it is not the content of the constitution that validates a constitution. It is the procedure of making a constitution.
“In the case of Nigeria, the military started from the false premise and even lied with the preamble, ‘We the people.’ The validity of a constitution requires that it must emanate from the people. Even the constitution given to us in 1954 by Lyttleton at independence was like a writ of summon. How do you make a constitution of a nation from another country? The question is what do we do to get out of the present dilemma?
“The only way out is for the National Assembly which has delegated power given to it by the people to make a law that will enable the people to give to themselves a new constitution. We can then abandon this constitution and follow the terms and conditions set out by the National Assembly to make a new constitution.”
Abayomi dismissed as null and void the reports of the previous constitutional conferences on the ground that it lacks legitimacy.
He said: “In terms of legitimacy, all the previous constitutional conference reports are of no value. But in terms of the content of the Constitution, they can be useful because knowledge can come from different sources. A constitution must have two things. It must have origin in the people. That is, it must originate from the people to have legitimacy. And it must have content from the people. Having content from the people implies that the individuals delegated by the votes of the people must come together and agree on a term as to whether the Constitution will be federal or unitary.
“The present constitution is not working and it can never work because the people did not agree to it. There will continue to be agitation and crisis in the country because the present constitution didn’t take into consideration the peculiarity of our nation.”
According to him, the way to get out of the quagmire is for the members of the constituent assembly elected by the votes of the people to formulate a new document that will take into consideration the diversity of the nation.
“The elected delegates can look into the previous constitution and extract from it. The problem with the national conference of former President Goodluck Jonathan was that it lacked legitimacy because it didn’t emerge from the people through the National Assembly. We would have been able to stand on it if it had legitimacy from the law made by the National Assembly that has delegated power through the votes of the people,” Abayomi posited.
Similarly, his other counterpart in the legal profession, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Chief Mike Ozekhome, harped on the urgent need to proffer a workable solution to the numerous challenges facing the country through a referendum.
In his view, the way the country is structured it would be quite difficult, if not impossible for any president to fix Nigeria to the benefit of the citizens.
Ozekhome maintained that a new people’s Constitution would be a veritable engine to drive genuine restructuring.
With a cynical disposition, he said: “President Tinubu should have the political will to change the Constitution because these problems will not go away until we tackle it headlong.
“A new constitution, subject to a referendum, is the right way to go. It is the solution to the numerous challenges facing the country.
“The killings we are witnessing, the poverty, the corruption, etc, they are all symptoms of a larger problem which is the basis of what we are talking about. Once you solve it, other things will be in place.
“The 1999 Constitution was military-imposed, and not subject to any referendum. Nigeria needs an indigenous and people-centric constitution to redirect the country’s journey of no destination.
“Nigeria is a country still yearning for nationhood. We are not united. A brand new constitution must be subjected to the referendum of the people.
“We have to have a constituent assembly and only the National Assembly can pass a law in that regard. Then, the draft constitution will now be signed by Mr. President and we will have a constitution.
“The engine of the Nigerian state, for now, is knocked and it is giving rise to all these mutual suspicions and religious intolerance.”
He said that only a change in the present system of government could save Nigeria from doom. “Virtually everything is wrong with our country: insecurity, collapsed infrastructure, failure of the public school system, the economy in shambles as epitomised by the free-fall of the value of the naira and spiraling inflation; an unremitting insurgency, etc. The list is endless.
“The greatest challenge is how to get the elite whose privileges are provided by the existing system to support its dismantling into a system that is potentially beneficial to ‘society’ but perhaps disproportionately harmful to their interests in the short term. We are faced with the same kind of conundrum as some Western countries with their welfare system,” he lamented.
The position of the presidential candidate of the National Conscience Party (NCP) in the 2015 election, Chief Martin Onovo, is not significantly different from those of the two legal luminaries as he joined them in the call for a new constitution.
Onovo told Sunday Sun that the new Constitution must focus on a true federal structure to return the country to the previously agreed federalism.
He, however, expressed pessimism that even the best of the constitution can be manipulated by corrupt operators.
Hear him: “There is no perfect Constitution. The principal problem with Nigeria at present is not the Constitution, but the illegitimate, incompetent, corrupt and lawless rulers that manipulate it.
“Consequently, a new Constitution operated by our lawless rulers may still not achieve the developmental objectives of Nigeria as envisaged.
“We must prevent lawless persons from seizing power. Nigeria became a federation of regions at independence. The unitary disposition we see presently in Nigeria resulted from the military central command structure that was imposed on Nigeria after the military seized power in 1966.
“A new Constitution must focus on true federalism to return the country to the previously agreed federal structure.”
The President of Osisioma Foundation, Dr Chike Obidigbo, while advocating the convocation of a constituent assembly, said it should be a dialogue that would make for a peaceful separation.
He described as a time bomb the present structure forcing Nigeria to remain in a forced union, warning that it could blow up at the slightest provocation.
He clarified that his position was in response to a statement credited to Prof. Ango Abdullahi, saying that Nigeria’s amalgamation had run its full course and proposed exploring separate paths for the country’s regions.
Obidigbo noted that the call for separation reflected a critical juncture in Nigeria’s history, particularly in the light of the escalating tension in different regions, especially the Southeast.
“I was intrigued by Prof. Abdullahi’s recent remarks, especially coming shortly after a Yoruba group’s call to expel the Igbo from Lagos and the Southwest.
“This situation underscores that Nigeria’s current framework is no longer viable.
“The recent nationwide protest organised by the youths of this country has brought back the same old worries that have always bedeviled Nigeria, thereby exposing our pretentious patriotism.
‘’It is remarkable to read that the North is now ready for Nigeria’s division into its constituent parts for many reasons. The North is out of power for 14 months only and they are feeling frustrated.
“Think of the Southeast’s marginalisation over the years and various leadership has never been bothered.
“Based on this new thinking in the North, I wish to support the challenge posed by Prof Ango Abdullahi that Nigeria should come together to discuss how to share what remains as assets and liabilities of the expired amalgam – Nigeria.
“Several nations have tried it and succeeded. India and Pakistan, Balkan States, USSR balkanised and Britain is heading toward that direction.
“I am calling on President Tinubu to, as a matter of urgency, convoke a meeting of Nigeria’s ethnic nationalities to overseer the review of the 1914 amalgamation edict instead of trying to put back life into a dead horse, “ Obidigbo posited.