BY AYO ESAN
SECRETARY-GENERAL of the Yoruba Council of Elders, Kunle Olajide, has said Nigeria needs a brand new constitution that will afford citizens the opportunity of sitting together to discuss the future.
Olajide who lamented that Nigerians were not used to the kind of insecurity that had enveloped the country in recent times, said throwing out the 1999 Constitution and creating a people’s constitution for the country was the most important thing now.
He said, in a chat with THE POINT, that no one could run Nigeria as a unitary state and succeed.
He said, “What we have been witnessing in the last five years is terrible. Nigeria has never been this polarised. We have condemned outrightly the 1999 constitution. It is a false document, military document. We were not part of its creation. So from the first sentence, it is false.
“Therefore, as far as we are concerned, we need a brand new people’s constitution that will allow us to sit down and discuss the future of this country. Nobody can run Nigeria as a unitary state and succeed. Nigeria is not a unitary state.
“It is made up of many nations. And it was on the basis of this, that the British gave us independence and we became a Republic. It was the military that, by centralising the administration of this country, made it a unitary system.”
Olajide noted that the 1999 constitution was at the root of Nigeria’s problems, saying, “That is why we have been retrogressing instead of progressing. That is also the cause of this insecurity, unemployment, hunger, poverty. And so we have become the poverty capital of the World. So, this 1999 constitution is not working, it cannot work and the earlier the authorities did something about it, the better for the country and themselves.
On the way forward for the country, Olajide said, “Now in a democratic dispensation, we need a Constituent Assembly of elected representatives of the Nigerian people to sit down, review all the reports of the past conferences. We should give them a few months to come up with a new constitution.
“Then the President will send a bill to the National Assembly for referendum on this terrible constitution that we are running. And whatever reports the Constituent Assembly comes up with should be subjected to referendum by the Nigerian people, not the National Assembly. For me, that is the solution to what we are having.”
