How that it is pretty certain we shall begin a national conference, sovereign or otherwise, on the country’s constitution probably during the first quarter of next year, an examination of how they did it in the United States nearly two hundred and twenty five years ago should provide some useful insights on how to succeed.
I have my doubts that it will for several reasons. First, I share the widespread public scepticism, even cynicism, about President Goodluck Jonathan’s conversion to the idea after resisting it all this long. Many people think it is essentially to divert public attention from his inability to solve the myriads of the problems he is faced with, some of them self-inflicted.
The more cynical members of the public even think it is a weapon those around the president – if not the man himself – who don’t believe in Nigeria want to use to break it up. If you think this is far-fetched you only need to ponder over government’s lackadaisical attitude to what Sam Nda-Isaiah, the publisher and columnist of Leadership, had aptly described as “industrial scale” oil theft under the president’s watch, to have a rethink.
As Governor John Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti said in his interview with Tell (November 11), “You don’t joke with your source of income, unless they know what we don’t know. Unless people carting away the resources – if indeed it is being stolen – are also people associated with the system.” This government, it seems, doesn’t give much damn about how the oil cabal is stealing the country blind.
Third, it is doubtful that the government has the capacity to fund and manage the conference in the face of a costly general election coming up in less than 18 months. Already it is an open secret that the government has found it difficult to adequately fund Senator Femi Okurounmu’s 13-man agenda setting panel, relatively modest as its cost is.
Last but by no means least, with Professor Ben Nwabueze, who seems to have this government’s full ears, lately offering to write a draft constitution for the conference, much to the surprise of only those who don’t know the man’s antecedents, it is obvious that the government has pretty much made up its mind what kind of constitution it wants to give this country.
If you know the professor’s antecedents then you won’t be surprised if his proposed draft constitution is likely to create more problems for the country than it can solve. Those old enough to remember or curious enough to search would know how 47 years ago he played the anticipatory role he now wants to replay. This was in February 1966 when our first military head of state, Major-General J. T. U. Aguiyi-Ironsi, set up a Constitutional Study Group under Chief F. R. A. Williams to carry out a brief similar to Senator Okurounmu’s.
However, even before Chief Williams could begin work in earnest, some members of the general’s kitchen cabinet, among who was our learned professor of law, persuaded him to promulgate the infamous Unification Decree 34 in May. Our professor reportedly had a hand in drafting it. The decree effectively put paid to Chief Rotimi’s assignment.
However, whatever anyone’s scepticism or cynicism about the national conference it is now more or less a fait accompli. Regular readers of this column may recall that on February 8 last year, I reversed my long-held objection to a sovereign national conference and called for it. My objection has been on the ground that the problem of our country has been more the attitude of its leaders than of its constitution with all its flaws. After all the best rules are not worth even the paper they are written on if they are obeyed only in the breach. And this has, by and large, been the case with our country where impunity has since become the guiding principle of state policy.
I changed my mind about the SNC not because the attitude of our leaders had changed, because it hadn’t – and still hasn’t. I changed my mind because, as I said then, “I simply do not see why any region should put up with the kind of insults and abuses the North has suffered because of a commodity from which the vast majority of its people have gained little or even nothing.”
So by all means let’s have not just a national conference. Let’s have a sovereign national conference even if there are no guarantees against its being used to break up the country. As I said in my article in reference, it would be a sad day for Africa and for the Black race, and, of course, for Nigerians themselves the day their country, as the largest concentration of Africans and the Black race – and for that matter, the smartest ones – breaks up.
Chances are it won’t but even if it does, the prospects that we can, in the end, sort out our differences and emerge stronger as a nation in spite of the best efforts of those who imagine opting out is their only hope of realising their full potential as a nation, is worth the risk of a break up.
So let me attempt a summary of a primer on how the Americans, whose presidential democracy we replaced our colonial legacy of parliamentary democracy with, did it 224 odd years ago. The primer is a 1969 book, The Constitution of the United States: An Introduction by Floyd G. Cullop. Per chance, we may learn a lesson or two at the end of our two-and-a-quarter century journey on how the Americans got it right the second time.
The first time was before 1777, a year after the original 13 states under the British declared their independence from colonial rule after winning their revolutionary war against the British crown. They then drew up The Articles of Confederation under which there was no central executive government or judiciary, only a national assembly, the Congress, which had no powers to raise taxes or raise an army and whose members were not even obliged to attend its sessions.
It took four years, i.e. 1781, for the last state to ratify it. It lasted only eight years thereafter because it proved unworkable. Eighteenth century American is, of course, not 21st century Nigeria. But the brevity of the Article of Confederation is still food for thought for those who talk glibly about confederation as the solution for Nigeria’s constitutional problems.
When the 1777 con-federal arrangement prove unworkable, the states called a convention in Philadelphia in 1787 to review it. All 13 states attended except Rhode Island. However, instead of merely revising the old constitution they embarked on a completely new one which replaced the confederation with a federation that had a central government with three arms that checked and balanced each other.
Powers were shared between the central government and the states. Those held by Congress were on an Exclusive List. Those held by both the centre and the states were on the Concurrent List. Others were denied to both.
The convention then decided to submit it to the people of the constituent states rather than to their legislative houses for ratification. It decided that before the new arrangement could become the supreme law of the land it had to be ratified by three quarters of the states or nine out of the 13.
Because transport and communications were slow in those days, making direct referendum difficult, constitutional conventions were set up in each state to which people sent delegates. By July 1788 ten states had ratified it and it became the Constitution of the United States of America. It went into effect on March 4, 1789 and by 1790 all the 13 states had adopted it. The Bill of Rights containing ten amendments were added in 1791. Since then sixteen more have been added and the last one ratified on July 5, 1971. Since then also the number of the states in the union has increased by addition, rather than by division as is our own case, to 50.
The American constitution is an excellent study in brevity, clarity and simplicity. As a study in contrast it couldn’t be more different from ours. But the really big difference is not so much the unwieldy size and complexity of ours. The big difference is that the Americans have respected theirs but we have not respected ours. Instead we keep quarrelling with it and, like the bad work men that we are, we keep trying to re-write it every so often.
It’s very unlikely that we will get it right for once this time around given what looks like the bad faith in convoking it but, success or failure, the conference, it seems, has now become inevitable.
