THE ONLY WAY THE CURRENT REVIEW OF THE 1999 CONSTITUTION CAN SUCCEED.
By Lucky Okoedion
SIDE NOTE: It is required to have an understanding of the core problems in the 1999 constitution before proceeding to read this. Click this sentence to see a previous publication detailing the fraud and evil in the 1999 constitution.
Now to the subject at hand – THE ONLY WAY THE CURRENT REVIEW OF THE 1999 CONSTITUTION CAN SUCCEED. Before we go into how to attempt to make some success out of the current nationwide constitution review exercise, let us point out just two (2) out of the several hurdles ahead of this exercise which ensure that this process is most likely to fail than to succeed:
1) It is bound to fail because the process has to follow the near impossible rules spelt out by the same constitution that is being amended, concerning how to amend its problem parts – the most difficult of which is that the draft bills resulting from this exercise will have to get two-third votes from the 36 states houses of Assembly in the country.
For starters, the Northern interests will be different from the Southern interests because the 1999 constitution that is being amended has hitherto fraudulently allowed the North to fail to harness her own resources but sit back to enjoy the resources from Southern Nigeria to the detriment of Southern Nigeria, to their own detriment in the North because only their political elite benefit from the oil wealth, and to the detriment of Nigeria as a whole because we are losing out on the wealth and jobs that would have been generated by the North if they were focused on making the best out of their untapped livestock, agricultural and mineral resources.
Only few Northern politicians understand that the current arrangement of surviving on oil and gas money from Niger Delta is not good for them. They will hence not vote in support of this core area of agitation. The interests of the North and the South may only align in the area of local government autonomy.
2) No matter how the process attempts to capture the will of the people through conferences and debates, if the draft bills survive the hurdles of the required votes at the national assembly, and if it also manages to survive the required two-third votes at the 36 State Houses of Assembly, it will still require the accent of the president – Muhammadu Buhari. This is the same president that refused to even look at the reports of 2014 National conference for several years after he got into office. Until his political party reluctantly set up a committee to look into it and come up with recommendation.
Yet those recommendations have not been acted on till date. The question now is ‘what does Buhari wish to see in this new exercise that was not reflected in the 2014 National conference or in the report submitted by the committee his party (APC) set up to look into it?’ Considering this, it will be naive of anyone to expect Buhari or the current ruling elite who benefit massively from the current situation of the country to make any sincere commitment towards rocking the boat in which they are cruising.
The probability of this current constitution review process being nothing but mere delay tactics to distract secessionist agitators and proponents of restructuring from their goal and then steal the initiative from them so as to quietly push the country safely to 2022 election year when intense politics will then continue with the distraction till 2023 is higher than otherwise.
Most of these politicians, especially the old stock like Buhari, Tinubu and co have been gravely blinded by politics and hence terribly divorced from reality. They are like those feasting in the ill-fated Titanic ship without knowing that it is already sinking.
To them everything is politics. They think all the current agitations in the country are politically motivated by those who lost the 2019 elections. They don’t understand that the new generation that is aggrieved don’t even want another election or an amended constitution.
They don’t pause to ask, ‘do people involved in the criminal act of burning INEC offices and police stations look like people motivated by politics? Did the people involved in the EndSars protests look like people motivated by politics? Do the secessionist agitators of today look like people motivated by politics? Do killer Fulani herdsmen look like people motivated by politics?’ So, because they see the whole thing as politics, this process may just be used to keep agitators distracted from their goal.
Now, let’s talk about how to make the best out of this process for the people:
We should all resolve in the hearings that we only want a single amendment to be made in the 1999 constitution. And that this single amendment should be for the constitution to give the people power to create a whole new constitution without the involvement of the current ruling class in the process – a self completing process that does not require the votes of state houses of assembly or the accent of the incumbent president.
To achieve this, the 1999 constitution should only be amended to recognize the creation of a new constitution to replace it and all current sections of the constitution that prohibits such, if any, should be amended accordingly.
Our hearings should be focused on suggesting the best procedure for a new constitution and the end product of this exercise should be that the suggested procedure for the creation of a whole new constitution would be added to this illegitimate 1999 constitution as the only amendment made.
This single amendment is what should go through all the processes and then get the president’s accent in a couple of months. Once signed into law, we can then begin with the process for a whole new constitution, using the 1963 constitution as a template. Not the current attempt at amending the current illegitimate 1999 constitution while it is still in force and while the offices created by it are still in force.
The summary is that before any other thing is done, the 1999 constitution needs to first be amended to:
- recognize the creation of a new constitution, and set up a procedure for doing that through a referendum.
- set up a procedure for dissolving the national assembly, the presidency and other authorities at the termination of current tenure, and then set up an interim leadership arrangement that entails having one person from each region acting with equal powers – none can make a decision without the approval of others. This should be for the short period of moving from the old system of government to the new system – and also for conducting elections into new offices. Since there are no state constitution yet, this can happen only at the federal level.
- set timeline for the process.
The need for this is that we must take the initiative of creating a new Nigeria away from the hands of the current beneficiaries of this failed system.
In other words, all current political players must be made to step out of their political roles and be mere citizens in the period of creating a new constitution and a new Nigeria.
Unfortunately, only a military coup provides this opportunity of shutting down the system before creating another through a new constitution. It is wrong. We need to have an arrangement that is like a reset button, but one that does not require a military coup. And the way to achieve it is if the current constitution is amended to provide for the scenario, and subsequent constitutions should also contain process for replacing them, shutting down the system and restarting it with a new constitution.
This is required because Nigeria is more of a conglomerate of nations (A United Nation) than a single nation. This will go a long way to strengthen our democracy and make it failure proof into the distant future. It will act as a failsafe or a democratic reset button for the country. This democratic innovation will also save democracy in Africa because other nations will learn from it and the rate of military coups will reduce.
Besides that, it is also logic 101. You cannot put something on nothing. You cannot use a problem to solve a problem. You cannot expect the same system and thinking that created a problem to solve it. This is the reason why all constitutional conferences have failed since the 1999 constitution came into force. And the reason why the current one will fail unless we amend the constitution to first set up procedure for dissolving the current system, creating a new constitution and beginning a new nation.
Again, without this, the current constitution review will fail and Nigeria will continue on its path to collapse, war or something worse. God forbid !
Lucky Okoedion is a believer of a new Nigeria where true democracy is practiced. He writes from Benin City, Nigeria. He can be reached on +2347038820118.
