I concluded last week’s beginning installment in this review by comparing the difference between Chapter 4 of MDRC ’76 and Chapter 2 of the 1979 Constitution to the difference between 6 and half a dozen. Since this was deliberately provocative, did I thereby diminish the considerable differences between the two documents in their respective other chapters and sections? I don’t think so. To prove this point, permit me to provide a temporal or historical context for this assertion of similarity, if not of identity, between Chapter 4 of MDRC ’76 and Chapter 2 of the 1979 Constitution.
When I first read the 1979 Constitution in the year in which it was formally instituted, I did not download a copy from the Internet as I have had to do in writing this review. This is because the Internet was not then as widely available as it is today. In other words, I had to get a printed copy of the Constitution and to do this, I had to drive to Lagos to obtain a copy at the Government Printer’s Office as there was no copy available in any of the bookshops in Ife or Ibadan. In that first print-run of the 1979 Constitution, the single most intellectually and ideologically interesting item was a so-called “Preamble” to Chapter 2 of the Constitution. Today, that “Preamble” is gone from all or any versions of the 1979 Constitution that you can download or buy in print form. To get it, you have to lay your hands on that original first print-run of the document. This is a pity because that “Preamble” is, in my opinion, the finest document of progressive social democracy in our political and constitutional history. Here, I can only summarize what it says.
Can any country in the developing world simultaneously pursue economic development and social justice or the production of wealth side by side with its egalitarian redistribution? That was the question that the “Preamble” posed and answered. After extensively reviewing policies and actions regarding this issue around the world, the Preamble concluded that although it was always a great challenge everywhere in the developing world to pursue wealth creation and social justice simultaneously, that is the path that the Federal Republic of Nigeria would henceforth take. The “Preamble” even went as far as to state that it was unfair and unacceptable to persuade the masses of Nigerians to wait first for wealth to be generated in an adequate quantum for redistribution to take place. In other words, to conservative and liberal politicians who have always cynically argued that since you cannot redistribute poverty, you have to create wealth first before you can distribute it, to such politicians and their ideological and intellectual supporters the “Preamble” stated unequivocally that in Nigeria wealth generation and redistribution would henceforth go together.
Although I do not have any direct evidence to prove this, I strongly believe that it was the fierce and widespread debate provoked by Osoba’s and Bala Usman’s Minority Draft Constitution that led to the intellectual and ideological progressivism of that “Preamble” to Chapter 2 of the 1979 Constitution. However, in place of such direct evidence, what we have is the textual and circumstantial evidence that we see in that Chapter 2 itself, most especially in Section 16 which deals specifically with the economic system for Nigeria. Perhaps it is best to quote directly from that Section itself:
“The State shall, within the context of the ideals and objectives for which provisions are made in this Constitution
(a) control the national economy in such a manner as to secure the maximum welfare, freedom and happiness of every citizen on the basis of social justice and equality of status and opportunity
(c) ensure….that the economic system is not operated in such a manner as to permit the concentration of wealth or the means of production and exchange in the hands of a few individuals or of a group
These are pretty much the same things or principles that Chapter 4 of MDRC ’76 states: an economic system in which the control of the economy, together with the means of production and exchange, is controlled by the State. The difference lies in the more unambiguous and precise language. For instance, where the ’79 Constitution talks of “every citizen”, Chapter 4 of MDRC ’76 always specifies concrete classes and groups as in the following quotes:
- The Federal Republic of Nigeria is committed to fostering the establishment of just social relations in all sectors of production and in all spheres of society and therefore shall especially support and protect the interests of the peasant farmers, nomads, artisans, petty traders, and wage earners and shall also develop genuine producer and consumer cooperatives and collectives.
- The Federal Republic of Nigeria shall within the framework of this Constitution treat with special urgency and determination the question of land ownership and control and resolve it in the interests of the peasant farmers and tenants on the principle that land shall be owned and controlled by those that work it and live on it.
I do admit it: to say 6 is the same thing as half a dozen is an equivalence, a generalization that obscures many specific things in each of the numbers between one and six. In this particular case, between the generalization in the ’79 Constitution’s principle of state ownership and control of the economy and the means of production and MDRC ’76’s addition of socialization of the means of production in favour of oppressed or disadvantaged classes and groups, there is a lot at stake. In other words, while you can hide and obscure many crucial things behind generalizations like “every citizen” and “means of production”, there is little that you can hide behind specifications like “peasant farmers”, “wage earners” and “land”.
All the same, it is important to remind the reader that my point in applying the trope of 6 and half of a dozen was to argue that contrary to the imputation of Segun Osoba in his “New Introduction” that there is a gulf, a chasm between the 1979 Constitution and MDRC ’76, I am arguing in this review that the difference, the distance between them is not that great. Also, I am arguing that it was in fact the debate that MDRC ’76 generated that led to the closing of the gap between the two documents. To this contention I now turn in the remaining part of this review.
It is perfectly understandable that both Dr. Abubakar Siddique Mohammed in his “Foreword” and Olusegun Osoba in his “New Introduction” jump from the institution of the 1979 Constitution to all the terrible and dispiriting things that have happened politically, economically and morally in Nigeria since then. Comrade Siddique is particularly trenchant in his account of how the gap has widened immeasurably between the few wealthy men and women and the majority of Nigerians in the intervening years and decades. He is equally persuasive in his account of the political opportunism that has led to ethnic, regional and religious divisiveness, especially with regard to the violence and the insecurity it has caused and continues to cause.
For his part, Osoba is devastating in his graphic account of the serial nature of the corrupt and dysfunctional misuse of the concentration of wealth and power in political elites, first in the time of military autocracy and later in the era of the civilian succession, showing graphically how closely entwined military and civilian elites have been from 1976 to the present. Especially, Osoba provides a focus on Olusegun Obasanjo as both exemplar and eminence grise of the military-cum-civilian despoliation of the nation, its resources and, possibly, its posterity. Much has been written about Obasanjo; very few can match the power and the insight of Osoba’s portrait of this man. Finally, and to his great credit, having provided such a valuable profile of Nigeria in ruins from 1976 to date, Osoba ends with what he calls a Five-Point Minimum Agenda which, in my opinion, demands serious consideration by all thinking and patriotic Nigerians, incidentally of all ideological persuasions.
But, did it all originate with the 1979 Constitution? Neither Mohammed nor Osoba explicitly make this argument. But that is what they are saying, implicitly! Implicitly, because they do not give any attention whatsoever to the struggles that have taken place in Nigeria since 1976. It is as if, once Osoba’s and Bala Usman’s Minority Report was not accepted and their Minority Draft Constitution seemed to have gone into historical oblivion, no more significant political, economic, social, intellectual and constitutional struggles took place. But this is simply not the case at all. Indeed, rather paradoxically, as I have sought to show in this review, the first major struggle that took place between 1976 and 1979, these being the dates, respectively, of the release by Osoba and Bala Usman of their historic Draft Constitution and the institution of the 1979 Constitution was in the realm of constitutional reform itself by way of that very 1979 Constitution which, in my reading, was a bye-product of Osoba’s and Bala Usman’s Draft Constitution and the debate that it generated.
Perhaps Segun Osoba, from his membership of the Constitution Drafting Committee (CDC) from which he and Bala Usman resigned, knows some things about the other 47 members of that CDC that serve to prevent him from admitting that his and Bala Usman’s Draft Constitution may have influenced the 1979 Constitution? I do not know. What I know is this: Segun Osoba has to be one the last men in Nigeria to be reminded that from 1976 to date, and especially throughout the late 70’s to the 80’s and 90’s, there were struggles in virtually all spheres of the public, national life of this country precisely because he was himself in the forefront of many of the struggles. As was also Abubakar Siddique Mohammed. Why then do both men almost completely leave out a consideration, a reexamination, no matter how briefly, of those struggles in which they themselves took part? Again, I do not know. I definitely can say that whatever is the answer to this poser, it is not defeatism. Why so? Because the segments written by both men in MDRC ’76 do not in any way read like words or testimonies from defeatist compatriots. Indeed, if anything, Osoba’s Five-Point Minimum Agenda is a “fighting” manifesto!
In a long sentence in which he introduces this Five-Point Minimum Agenda, Osoba says the following somewhat revealing things concerning preconditions for any reform that might have a chance at success at the present moment in our country’s affairs:
In view of the persistent misconduct of successive regimes in power in Nigeria, the Nigerian state is currently enmeshed in a profound crisis of governance that is not capable of being resolved or alleviated by a resort to the normal practice of constitutional, legal, judicial or other institutional reform. Lawlessness and corruption have become so endemic in all sectors of state, society and economy that any strategy of change that is short of the “root and branch” overthrown of the existing order is doomed to fail. For instance, the legal basis of governance, i.e. the legitimacy of laws passed in the National Assembly and State Houses of Assembly is often and viciously subverted by the self-centeredness, careerism and corruption of the so-called “lawmakers”…[pp 6-7]
Osoba’s argument here is unassailable. This is its most forceful proof: they passed the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA) in 2015. It was intended to make the administration of criminal justice in Nigeria fairer, faster and more efficient. To date, it has been observed or effected far more in neglect than in enforcement. But there is an unperceived irony in Osoba’s argument here and it is this: at the very moment that he is supremely suspicious that any constitutional or legal instruments can work for meaningful reform, he and CEDDERT bring out this historic constitutional document written in 1976. Irony? Yes. But also, unquenchable revolutionary hope!
- Biodun Jeyifo
bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu
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