The clamour for the restructuring of Nigeria has been on since the colonial period and the need to have a truly people’s constitution to replace the 1999 Constitution that is foisted on Nigerian citizens has gathered unprecedented momentum, since President Muhammadu Buhari came to power in 2015.
The argument by a section of the Nigerian society to the effect that the unity of Nigeria is not negotiable is fallacious and rebuttable. The truth is that we cannot continue to live in self-denial by threading a path that is totally alien to well-established international norms. The right to self-determination is a well known, established principle that is recognised by international law.
Indeed, Nigeria is too small a country for a section to be agitating for disintegration. Instead, we as a nation should aspire to belong to a United African States
Fundamentally, a democratic nation is a voluntary union, a fusion of centrifugal and centripetal forces that agree to bind together as a political entity for mutual and overall interest of all the parties involved. This connotes that for the union to continue to exist, there must be a broad-based consensus among the citizens.
In the Nigerian case, the 1914 amalgamation of the northern and southern protectorates by Lord Fredrick Lugard has been arguably described by many political pundits as a British Colonial contraption to further entrench their grip on power and continue to perpetuate and sustain their obnoxious neo-colonial, imperialistic and hegemonistic policies, even after colonial rule.
It is, therefore, a welcome development that many eminent Nigerians of Northern extractions including former President Ibrahim Babangida, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, Gen. T.Y. Danjuma, andw Prof. Jerry Gana, who played very vital roles in the governance of this country, are lending their golden voices in support of restructuring the Nigerian state.
If we all agree that military rule is an aberration, the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria which is a product of that anomaly cannot be said to be the people’s constitution.
It is in this regard that I want to align with the position of the southern leaders of thought on Nigeria’s restructuring, that Nigeria should be restructured in a manner that guarantees equity and fairness. Prof. Ben Nwabueze (SAN) who spoke on behalf of other notable Nigerians-Chief Emeka Anyaoku, Prof. Akin Oyebode, Prof. Kinise Okoko, Chief Tola Adeniyi, Chief Solomon Asemota, Prof. Anthony Akila, Chief Ayo Adebanjo, General Alani Akinrinade, Mr. Donald Duke, Chief Victor Attah and NADECO Chieftain, Admiral Ndubusi KanU (retd) called for “negotiated restructuring to be implemented through a new constitution”.
Nwabueze, for instance, rightly said, “As a sovereign people, we have the right to govern ourselves. We also have the right to determine what we want.” He however, stressed that the call for restructuring “does not translate to disintegration”.
Indeed, Nigeria is too small a country for a section to be agitating for disintegration. Instead, we as a nation should aspire to belong to a United African States where Nigeria, Ghana, Libya, etc, will become states in the African Union, and the present six geopolitical zones transform to local government administrative units, so that we can compete favourably with China, USA and India, in terms of human and natural resources.
In line with the position of the Southern Leaders of Thought, Prof. Olu Obafemi observed that Nigeria inherited an unworkable and imbalanced state structure from our colonial masters, Britain, hence the consistent debate has become the symbolic crystallisation point of deeper conflicts of Identity, distribution of resources and sovereignty.
The current Nigeria’s ground norm, the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, was the product of that political robbery by the
Military, an anomaly in all sense of decency; we should, therefore, not be seen to accept it as the people’s constitution. At best, we can say that in the absence of a viable working document that reflects the divergent interest of a vast majority of Nigerians, it can be used temporarily to regulate the affairs of the country, pending when a “real” Constitution will be put in place.
The preamble to the 1999 Constitution which states that, “we the ‘people’ of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, having firmly and solemnly resolved to live in unity and harmony as on indivisible and indissoluble sovereign nation, do hereby make and give to ourselves the following constitution…” is a farce.
To lean on the words of Prof. Chris Mustapha Nwaokobia Jnr., “At the heart of our moral decay is a Constitution that is both a lie and fraudulent. At the heart of the pervasive greed in the land is a flawed and greedy superstructure that gives control of just about everything and resources to meddlesome centre. At the root of the villainy, banditry and criminality that tyrannise the space is a Constitution and various legal programmatics that are manifestly unjust, unfair and
inequitable.
The time to have a truly people’s Constitution is now. President Muhammadu Buhari and members of the National Assembly should take bold initiatives and seize the mood of the moment in the nation by putting in place machinery for a referendum on the Nigeria questions. The present efforts of the National Assembly to restructure Nigeria is a novel one indeed but fell short of the desires/wishes of most critical stakeholders in the Nigerian project.
*Umaru is Ph.D student, Department of Mass Communication, Nasarawa State University, Keffi.
