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Tag: National conference

  • On the national conference

    The calling for a national conference by the President in his recent independence broadcast has generated a lot of comments. Some have wondered why the sudden conversion of the President and the president of Senate to the idea of a national conference when for the past three years he has resisted the idea. Critics of the President have suggested that this is a political move on his part to manipulate the politics of Nigeria towards his re-election in 2015. Some even see some sinister move on his part to grant resource control through the conference to the oil-producing South-south where he comes from. On the other hand, some have hailed the action of the President on the grounds that it is never too late to change. After all, Saul who was a persecutor of Christians later became Paul the Apostle. Those who have called for conference for many years to decide and determine the future of Nigeria have also hailed the President for acceding to their request. The situation unfortunately, has now been complicated by the APC’s decision to boycott the conference. I’m totally against this call for boycott. It is better to discuss our affairs and to try and find ways and solutions to complex political situations than bury our heads in the sand and think that the problems would go away. This may not be the intended purpose of the boycott but the result will tend to validate that intention.

    I personally believe that we must explore and exploit all ways and avenues to force the hands of government to change course in this country or we would all be consumed by the Fire Next Time. I believe a conference can develop its own internal dynamics just like any revolution and those with secret agenda would not be able to contain it. This should be the tactic all those who want something concrete from the conference should adopt. Of course, critics are right to say that whatever is decided should not go to the National Assembly whose members were largely rigged in, but that it should be subject to a national referendum and that whatever “we the people” decide should become the supreme law. The question of two sovereigns at the same time should not arise. Once the referendum has passed, the President through a presidential proclamation would bring the resolution into law and call for new elections into the various organs that the conference would have decided upon. If the APC sticks to its guns that it would not participate, what we would then have is a document produced not by the first eleven, but by people on the reserve seats. This would not be in the interest of the country. I think the APC should think all over it again and go to the conference determined to take control of the discussion rather than standing outside the conference and expecting things to go wrong.

    Beatrice and Sydney Webb of the famous Fabian school believed that “it is better for revolutionaries to permeate political bodies from within rather than to stand outside them shouting at the deaf”. I have always been guided by the Fabian theory and practice and I think all political animals should be guided by them. Our country can be a great country. The economic fundamentals of this country are solid. We’ve got the resources and the people. What is lacking is leadership and determination on the part of leadership to force our nation to realise its full potentialities. We should not wait until this house of Nigeria has fallen before we begin to salvage it. We now have an opportunity in the national conference and I believe we should seize the moment.

    Events in other parts of the world should show us that there is no point sitting on the fences. We should look at countries like Greece, Egypt, Pakistan, which are collapsing into irrelevance and chaos. We are just too many, 170 million of us for experimentation, because if our country were to collapse, where would 170 million people go as refugees? Prevention is better than cure. We have an opportunity to prevent sure political debacle and economic disintegration through this conference and deciding to take necessary precaution to avoid tragic end to the Nigerian project. This is not the time to play politics; it is the time for statesmanship. All Nigerians should support discussion at the national conference and taking positive decisions to change the course of our national development. If after we would have given our support, the political leaders in government today decides to subvert the wishes of the people, then the consequences and the blood of our people would be on their heads.

    Choosing those who would represent the people may be problematic, but I think we should use the current population to decide the representation of the states. Critical stakeholders like labour, universities, and even students should be represented by their leaders. Government in its wisdom may also want to select some leaders of the two main monotheistic religions of Christianity and Islam to represent special interest. This idea of people representing ethnic and tribal entities is totally unnecessary because after all whatever ethnic or tribal groups that Nigeria may have are already represented at state levels.

    One of the issues that this conference should be seized with would be the whole question of revenue allocation, fiscal federalism or resource control as it is popularly known. There should be discussion on consumption and value-added taxation. There should also be discussion on the system of government itself. It has become obvious to many Nigerians that the present presidential system of Nigeria is too expensive and concentrates too much power in the hands of government executives at local, state and federal levels. We should also raise the issue of devolution of power and resources from the federal to the states and local governments. We must also settle forever that it is the states coming together to form the federal government and not the federal government creating states. In other words, there can be no room for federal intervention in local government creation and financing. That should belong to the states’ jurisdiction. So the talk of three-tier system of government is an aberration. We can only have states and the federal government relating in a mutually beneficial way. We should also be discussing whether to go back to parliamentary system of government and cabinet government of collective responsibility and where members of the cabinet would also be members of the house and the President or Prime Minister would be the leader of the majority party in the house and would be subjected to routine questions and enquiry about reasons for government action by a virile opposition in the house. This is of course a cheaper system of government, and the disconnect which currently exists between the executives and the legislatures would be done away with.

    The present concentration of power on a presidential Poobah, which makes our president the most powerful of all presidents in the world would undergo radical transformation. The jurisdiction of each level of government would also be discussed and agreed upon to eliminate the anomaly of a federal Ministry of Agriculture when the federal government has no land of its own apart from Abuja. The starting point of the discussion should be the independence constitution of 1960 which was the only constitution that our political leaders agreed upon without guns pointing to their heads. These are the issues which must be discussed and agreed upon so that the energies of our people can be released for positive development of the sciences and the arts and so that we can stop talking about constitutions while other countries of the so called developing world are already sending probes to Mars.

  • ‘How national conference can succeed’

    ‘How national conference can succeed’

    In this piece, legal scholar Prof. Ben Nwabueze (SAN) highlights the differences between the 2005 Abuja Political Conference and the proposed National Dialogue and offers suggestions on the mode of operation, membership composition and report ratification.

    In February 2005, President Olusegun Obasanjo suddenly convened what he called the National Political Reform Conference (NPRC).

    The charade did not end with the abrupt disbandment of the NPRC, but was continued by the National Assembly Joint Constitutional Reform Committee (JCRC) under the chairmanship of the Deputy Senate President, Senator Ibraham Mantu, whose main object was to obtain, by fraudulent manipulation, a semblance of public approval for the elongation of the President’s and state governors’ tenure of office.

     

    Purpose of the proposed national conference and a legal framework for its operation

    Being a palpable fraud, a farce, and programmed to come to nothing, the 2005 NPRC cannot in any way be equated with the proposed National Conference, or be used as a basis for saying that the latter will also come to nothing. As conceived, the proposed National Conference has a specific purpose, namely, to discuss and agree on the terms and conditions to be embodied in a new Constitution as the basis on which the diverse nationalities and peoples comprised in Nigeria can live together in peace, security, progress and unity as one country under a common central government. This is the primal purpose of the proposed National Conference, the crux or pivot of its agenda, and to which everything else is ancillary.

    Given the above primal purpose for it, the initial problem facing the Conference is to fashion out a Legal Framework for convening and holding it, and for holding a Referendum to approve a Constitution adopted at the Conference. Without such a Legal Framework, the Conference cannot effectively take off as conceived, and will be doomed to fail as did the 2005 NPRC for the reason, among others, that, as earlier explained, there was no law establishing it and backing up its work. The task of fashioning out appropriate Legal Framework for the proposed National Conference has, happily, been entrusted to a Presidential Advisory Committee. No Committee of this type, with wide-ranging Terms of Reference, was set up in 2005 as a prelude to the convening of the NPRC, and to lay the foundation for its successful outcome. In any case, as earlier stated, fashioning a new Constitution for Nigeria was never part of the agenda or purpose of the NPRC.

    Some years ago, in October 2001 to be precise, The Patriots prepared such a Legal Framework in the form of a Bill, titled the National Conference and Referendum Bill, which it submitted to the Presidency and the National Assembly. The Bill, after some revision, was re-submitted to the two bodies in 2013.

    The long title of the Bill describes it as “A Bill for an Act to make provisions for convening a National Conference of the peoples of Nigeria for the purpose of discussing and adopting a new Constitution to be submitted for consideration and approval by the people of Nigeria at a Referendum and matters ancillary thereto.” The long title thus provides a clear enough description of the character of the Conference proposed. This is reaffirmed by a declaration in a Preamble that the Conference is “a Conference of the nationalities and ethic groups comprised in this Nation so as to give them the opportunity to exercise their inherent right to determine democratically for themselves the Constitution by which they wish to be governed in one united Nigeria” (emphasis supplied). The Preamble further declares that the need for the Conference arises from the fact that the Constitution under which the country is governed “came into existence as a result of a Decree enacted by the Federal Military Government.”

    The Bill then goes on to spell the process for holding a Referendum for the approval of the Constitution by the entire mass of the people, which is to bestow legally binding force upon it.

    A Referendum of the people to approve the Constitution is the most fundamental aspect of the whole process. It is no doubt a novel process in the country, but that is what is legitimately due to the Nigerian people– an opportunity, for the first time since the creation of the Nigerian state in 1914, to adopt, through Referendum, a Constitution by and for themselves in exercise of the constituent power inherent in them as a‘sovereign people, not just to make an input in the amendment of an imposed Constitution. It is their birthright as a sovereign people, a birthright of which they have long been denied, first, by our British colonial masters, then, by our military masters, and, now, by our so-called democratic rulers in the Presidency and the National Assembly. There is no justifiable reason for continuing to deny them that birthright.

    Given an existing legal order, constituted by a Constitution, the principle of the Rule of Law, by a Legislative Assembly, a Presidency, a Judiciary and other instrumentalities of government, such as we have in Nigeria, a National Conference to adopt a People’s Constitution, and a Referendum to approve the Constitution so adopted, must be authorised by a law enacted by the National Assembly and assented to by the President, in the terms set out in The Patriots’ Bill. There is no way a Referendum can be held in the country under the existing legal order without an enabling law prescribing how it is to be conducted, its outcome and the force of the result in law. People cannot just troop out to vote in a referendum. Anything else outside the legal framework set out in The Patriots’ Bill can only take place by way of a revolution, such as happened in the eight African countries where the Conference took place outside the pre-existing legal order. It is doubtful, to say the least, whether such a revolution can take place in Nigeria, as things are at present. The impediments are too many and too great.

    Sections 16(1) and 17(8) of the Bill deserve to be specially noticed. Section 16(1) provides : “The Chairman and Secretary of the National Conference shall certify the Draft Constitution as passed by the National Conference and lodge authenticated copies thereof with the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives who shall cause it to be laid before the appropriate House but the said Draft Constitution shall not be subject to any change or amendment by any of these authorities.” (emphasis supplied).

    Section 17(8) says : “… the Draft Constitution for the Federal Republic of Nigeria adopted and passed by the National Conference shall become law and be binding on all persons and authorities when and if there is a majority of ‘YES’ votes at the Referendum approving it….”

    Thus, the National Conference and Referendum Bill prepared by The Patriots sets out in clear enough terms an appropriate Legal Framework for the proposed National Conference. The Presidential Advisory Committee may propose amendments to it.

     

    The vexed question whether the conference has the character of a sovereign body

    The Legal Framework for the convening and holding of a National Conference and a Referendum, as set out above, does not confer upon the Conference the character of a Sovereign National Conference. It is a contradiction, both in ideas and in terms, to demand a Sovereign National Conference when a sovereign government is still in place and in control; you must first displace or emasculate the latter before you can have an SNC, as was the case in the eight African states of Benin, Togo, Congo (Brazzaville), Niger, Mali, Chad, Gabon and Zaire in the period 1990 to 1993.

    For the sake of a proper understanding of the meaning of the term, “Sovereign National Conference”, it needs to be explained that the provisions in The Patriots’ Bill to the effect that a Constitution adopted at the National Conference “shall not be subject to any change or amendment” by the National Assembly or the Presidency (section 16(1)), and that the Constitution, so adopted, “shall become law and be binding on all persons and authorities” directly it is approved at a Referendum (section 17(8)), do not make the Conference a sovereign body, in the strict sense of the term, inasmuch as the finality of its decisions and the legally binding force of the approval of its decisions by the Referendum derive from a law enacted by the sovereign legislative authorities under the country’s existing legal order.

    But refusal by the National Assembly or the Presidency to enact into law, the provisions in sections 16(1) and 17(8) of the Bill, or to abide by them after their enactment into law, will be a test of the ability of the Nigerian people, in spite of the impediments, to assert and demonstrate their power and supremacy as the repository of the country’s sovereignty and the source of the sovereign power exercised by the legislative and executive organs of government. From the contest of power over this issue between the sovereign government and the people as the ultimate sovereign, the National Conference may emerge as a sovereign body.

     

    Ensuring the adoption of a suitable new constitution by the conference

    Ensuring that the National Conference adopts a suitable new Constitution for the country raises a problem perhaps more troublesome and more perplexing than the issue of fashioning out appropriate Legal Framework; the problem is not taken care of by fashioning out an appropriate Legal Framework. Unless the adoption of a suitable new Constitution for the country is ensured and is realised, it (i.e. the Conference) may become a talk-shop, as did the 2005 NPRC, without achieving its primal purpose, which is to give us a new Constitution. It would thus be a failure, as asserted by those opposed to the idea. To ensure the accomplishment of this primal purpose, the Conference, when it convenes, must have before it, a Draft new Constitution to form the basis of its deliberations; without this, its meetings are bound to become a talk-shop and will not accomplish their primal purpose. Clearly, a situation where every Nigerian or every member of the Conference may submit a Draft new Constitution for consideration by the Conference will result in the Conference having before it too many Draft Constitutions, which may make it difficult for it to accomplish its primal purpose.

    Thus, the problem boils down to the issue of a modus operandi for the Conference.

    But, whilst the Committee’s recommendations are awaited, it seems clear that we cannot run away from the imperative necessity of having a Constitution Drafting Committee. The Okurounmu Presidential Advisory Committee itself is not envisaged as a Constitution Drafting Committee, and is neither intended nor mandated by its Terms of Reference to function as one. The job requires a specialist committee of experts.

    A Constitution Drafting Committee was part of the modus operandi used in making the 1979 Constitution. The Federal Military Government (FMG) had in 1976, by an executive instrument, set up a Constitution Drafting Committee (CDC) of 49 members (the 50th member, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, declined to serve) composed of prominent lawyers, men and women knowledgeable in the principles and practice of statescraft, and other seasoned experts/specialists (the 49 Wise Men, as they came to be known), to prepare a Draft Constitution. A Draft was duly prepared by the Committee. Thereafter, the FMG enacted a Decree establishing a Constituent Assembly – the Constituent Assembly Decree 1977 – corresponding more or less to the proposed National Conference. As constituted under the enabling Decree, the Assembly had 230 members, of whom 20 were appointed by the FMG, seven were the Chairman of the CDC (Chief FRA Williams SAN) and the chairmen of its six sub-committees (I was one of the six), and the remaining 203 members were elected, not directly by the people, but by the local government councils acting as electoral colleges.

    But the important point to note as regards the issue of modus operandi is that the Draft Constitution prepared by the CDC was laid before the Assembly and formed the authorised basis for its deliberations. The enabling law required the Draft Constitution to be presented in the Assembly in the form of a Bill, which the Assembly was to deliberate upon following a procedure of first and second readings and detailed clause by clause consideration in a committee of the whole Assembly. The procedure allowed for amendments to be moved by members. Indeed, an amendment seeking to replace the presidential system proposed in the Draft with the parliamentary system of cabinet government was rigorously pressed upon the Assembly in two different forms and lost : see Proceedings of the Constituent Assembly, Official Report, vol. 11, cols 1943 – 55; cols. 1981 – 8. The Chairman of the CDC and the Chairmen of its six sub-committees, sitting in the front benches, were assigned the responsibility of piloting the Draft Constitution Bill through the Assembly. It needs to be stated, despite the controversy that arose over the issue between the Assembly and the FMG, that the 1977 – 78 Constituent Assembly was not a mere deliberative body, and that the substance, content and form of the 1979 Constitution were the product of its decisions, notwithstanding a few changes surreptitiously slipped in by the FMG at the last minute after the Constitution Bill had been passed by the Assembly. Such, then, was the modus operandi used in making the 1979 Constitution.

    Recognising the imperative necessity of having before the proposed National Conference a suitable Draft ew Constitution to form the basis of its deliberations, I formed in the course of the Uyo National Political Summit the idea of getting a team of prominent lawyers, political scientists and other experts with specialist knowledge to work with me to prepare a suitable Draft new Constitution and, when the Draft is ready, to re-convene the Uyo Political Summit to have a thorough and critical look at it, and make such revisions and changes as may be considered necessary. The re-convened Uyo Political Summit would be a kind of mini National Conference. Leaders from the various geo-political Zones attending the Summit will be duly inducted to mobilize and enlighten participants from their Zones on the provisions in the Draft in order to facilitate deliberations on it and its adoption at the National Conference proper.

    As I said in my last letter, dated October 31, 2013, to the 15 members of my Committee of lawyers, political scientists and other experts, drawn from the six geo-political Zones,, “unless the National Conference, when it convenes, has before it a Draft New Constitution, to be piloted by people well acquainted with its provisions and well inducted on what is necessary to be done to get it adopted, the Conference may lose focus and degenerate into a talk-shop and end without achieving anything, like the previous ones”.

    In preparing a Draft, we will look at Drafts prepared by Pronaco, The Patriots, the amendments/revisions made on the 1999 Constitution or under consideration by the National Assembly, and proposals from other quarters, as well as the constitutions of some other African countries. When my Committee completes its work, then, its Draft, with changes made on it by the re-convened Uyo National Political Summit, will be sent to the Presidency, the National Assembly, and the Presidential Advisory Committee if its life/mandate has not expired by the effluxion of the time given to it to wind up its work and turn in a report.

     

    Chairmanship of the conference

    It needs hardly be emphasised that the character of the proposed National Conference, and its success or failure, would be determined, to a great extent, by the credentials, the personality and forcefulness of character of its Chairman. He or she must be a person with a considerable measure of acceptability in the Northern and Southern segments of the country, and whose mind, attitude and disposition are not known to be unduly conditioned or otherwise affected by the North-South Divide, which must be acknowledged as among the worst of the country’s many afflictions – a person who, therefore, commands the confidence of the generality of people in both segments. In addition, he or she must be a person whose age and condition of health leave him or her sufficient physical strength as well as mental and emotional stability to be able to withstand the enormous strain and stress of piloting, mediating and moderating the proceedings of the Conference, which are expected to be stormy, even acrimonious, a task that would tax the patience of even the Biblical Job.

    It is as well that the President, as the authority to appoint the Chairman of the Conference, should start right away to give serious thought to the choice of a person to chair it. The choice is not going to be an easy one, because there are not many Nigerians that meet the above criteria.

  • National conference: What role for National Assembly?

    National conference: What role for National Assembly?

    President Goodluck Jonathan has stirred the hornet’s nest by his declaration that the resolutions of the proposed National Conference would be forwarded to the National Assembly for consideration and passage into law. Opinions are divided on this issue as they are divided on almost every other burning issue in our fatherland. Remarkably, there seems to be two main schools of thought in this matter: those who are convinced that the National Assembly should not play any role in the outcome of the Conference and another group that thinks that the National Assembly must legally validate the output of the Conference.

    From reports, the Presidency, the National Assembly, old PDP, New PDP, Alhaji Adamu Chiroma, some other Nigerians and institutions, belong to the former school of thought while APC, Conference of Nigeria Political Parties, majority of Civil Society Organisations, some other Nigerians and groups, belong to the latter. Nevertheless, I am aware of a third school of thought who has dismissed the idea of the conference completely. I will not extrapolate my analysis to cover their concerns.

    My focus in this piece is to navigate through the 1999 Constitution (as amended) to find provisions that are relevant to the proposed National Dialogue. At the end of my analysis, one may be in a better position to identify which of these schools stand on a firmer constitutional fulcrum to maintain its position.

    Before delving into the constitutional provisions, I think we should take samplers of the statements emanating from some of those that have commented on this thorny issue. Chairman, Senate Committee on Media, Enyinnaya Abaribe, while speaking on behalf of the House of Senate, was quoted as saying:

    “For the President to declare that the final outcome of the proposed national conference would be subjected to National Assembly’s ratification is in recognition of the fact that there cannot be two sovereigns at the same time.”

    “The Senate welcomes the President’s pronouncement and, however, assures that the wishes of majority of Nigerians would always determine the constitutional review process, which is ongoing. The Senate believes that whatever will be done to uphold the unity of Nigeria will always be welcomed.”

    Senate leader, Chief Victor Ndoma-Egba (SAN), said: “That is the logical thing because some recommendations may require legal backing. Some might require constitutional amendment. That is the logical thing to do. …. It is only the National Assembly that can make laws and they were elected by the people so the power to make laws has not been transferred by any stretch of the imagination. So, at the end of the day, it is how the National Assembly views it.”

    “Remember that the process also in the National Assembly will require public hearing. We usually subject our processes to public hearing. People can make inputs which could be reflected in the constitution, the essence of the conference in my view is for people to dialogue more than just making recommendations.”

    On his part, the Chairman, Senate Committee on Rules and Business, Ita Enang, said: “It is a good thing for the president to have said that the result of the National Conference will be sent to the National Assembly to assist in the ongoing constitutional amendment. What they are expected in this regard is that at the end of the day, they will present the White Paper of the National Conference and the various areas arrived at, in form of bills to the National Assembly for consideration.”

    “Why other ones in the past did not see the light of the day was because they were not presented to the National Assembly, not even in form of bills.”

    Chairman, House Committee on Narcotics and Financial Crimes, Jagaba Adams, said: “The National Assembly itself is a national conference. Can we do another national conference that has no constitutional provision substituting it with a legal national conference? To me, in the first place, something is wrong with it. Anything outside the National Assembly is not known to the Constitution. I cannot say that the proposed national conference is illegal, all I am saying is that there is no constitutional provision for it. The only constitutional provision is that people should have representatives in the National Assembly, States Assembly and the Local Government Councils. Now, the President has said will commit the outcome to the National Assembly, it’s good that he remembered that the National Assembly has a role to play. But now, until we get to the river, we cannot determine how to cross it.”

    From the foregoing statements, one can understand the mindset of the members of the National Assembly: They see the outcome of the proposed Conference as external input on their constitutional amendment process. The tragedy of this mindset is that it gives impetus to the position of the other school of thought that the talk-shop is a jamboree. There is no gainsaying that the Constitution provides the ultimate law-making process for the National Assembly to perform (as we shall soon confirm from a trajectory of constitutional provisions), it is nevertheless necessary for the National Assembly to accept that it must step-down many of their rules in order to accommodate the outcome of the Conference as a special executive bill which they shall pass, of course, into an Act.

    The best way to do this is to commence with an Act establishing the National Conference Commission to midwife the proposed National Conference. The contents of the National Conference Commission Act will be part of the product of the work of the Advisory Committee on National Dialogue chaired by Dr. Femi Okurounmu.

    On the other extreme divide, CNPP has issued a statement saying: “CNPP recalls that since our return to democracy in 1999, the National Assembly at various times had embarked on the process of amendment of the 1999 Constitution and at no time was any of the fundamental issues amended. We stand to be corrected, so as to reassure Nigerians that handing over of the report to the National Assembly instead of convening a Sovereign National Conference will pass to our children a far better country than we now have. In other words, the present National and State Assemblies lack the political will to insert in a new constitution critical issues like devolution of powers to the regions, unicameral legislature under a parliamentary system, truly independent INEC, EFCC, ICPC, creation of additional state for the South East, and fiscal federalism, among other issues.”

    The expression and fear of CNPP cannot be faulted. The only fallacy I have identified in their statement is the presumption that a “Sovereign” National Conference, where the National Assembly will play no role, can be successfully held in the present dispensation. I think that such rationalisation is simplistic, not pragmatic, and capable of suffering legal epilepsy as the courts might strike down such contraption as being in breach of the fons et origo, that is the Constitution.

    Let me, therefore, delve into the provisions of the Constitution proper.

    Whether the Constitution mentioned the words “National Conference/Dialogue

    Like Adams said, there is no provision where the words “National conference/dialogue” have been expressly mentioned. However, a Constitution has its letters and its spirit. Although the words have not been expressly mentioned by the Constitution, they are contained in the spirit of the Constitution. Of course, there is no constitution anywhere in the world that contains expressly all the words, actions or activities of those it regulates. What is important is that the spirit of the Constitution should contemplate such words or activity by any means of interpolation or extrapolation. This is the reason the law has provided various rules of interpretation of statutes to include literal rule, golden rule, ejusden generis rule, mischief rule, and the various maxims. Lest we forget, the 1999 Constitution is an implied Act of the National Assembly, an existing law under section 315 of the 1999 Constitution, and forms the Schedule to Decree No. 24 of 1999. Therefore, it can be subjected to any of these rules of interpretation, where the court finds it necessary.

    Constitutional provisions supporting convocation of a national conference

    Sovereignty belongs to the People: Section 14(2)(a) of the Constitution provides:

    “It is hereby, accordingly, declared that-

    (a) sovereignty belongs to the people of Nigeria from whom government through this Constitution derives all its powers and authorities.”

    This provision makes it explicit that sovereignty belongs to the people. It, therefore, follows that the people can decide to exercise their sovereign powers in any manner allowed by the Constitution. The Constitution seems to have placed the custody of this sovereign power on the National Assembly.

    Section 40 of the Constitution guarantees every person the fundamental right to assemble freely and associate with other persons throughout Nigeria. In particular, the person may form “any other association for the protection of his interests….” It is hence not unconstitutional for the President to form an “association” on National Dialogue to discuss the affairs of Nigeria.

    Why we cannot bypass the National Assembly in toto

    The legislative powers of the Federation are vested in our bicameral National Assembly. Section 4 (1) of the Constitution, which gives fillip to this position provides that: “Nigeria is one indivisible and indissoluble sovereign state to be known by the name of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”

    Section 4 (2) of our Constitution further provides:

    “The National Assembly shall have power to make laws for the peace, order and good government of the Federation or any part thereof with respect to any matter included in the Exclusive Legislative List set out in Part 1 of the Second Schedule to this Constitution.”

    Pursuant to this provision, Items 67 and 68 of Part 1, Second Schedule of the Constitution gives the National Assembly powers to legislate on:

    Item 67: “Any other matter with respect to which the National Assembly has power to make laws in accordance with the provisions of this Constitution.”

    Item 68: “Any matter incidental or supplementary to any matter mentioned elsewhere in this List.”

    A fortiori, the National Assembly should exercise its legislative power to pass into an Act, any decision of the Conference that touches on any matter in the Exclusive Legislative List, including matters contained in the Concurrent Legislative List. A major issue is whether the National Assembly has power to legislate on the dismemberment of Nigeria, since compromising the “unity” of Nigeria is not listed anywhere as an item capable of being legislated upon. More so, section 15(1) of the Constitution provides that “The motto of the Federal Republic of Nigeria shall be Unity and Faith, Peace and Progress.” With a greater force, Section 2 (1) of the Constitution provides that: “Nigeria is one indivisible and indissoluble sovereign state to be known by the name of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.” This may be the reason some commentators have said that the unity of Nigeria is non-negotiable.

    One sure way of adding or removing any provision of the Constitution, including “the unity of Nigeria”, if the Conference tinkers with it, is to rely on section 9 of the Constitution, which in subsection (1) allows the National Assembly to alter “any of the provisions of the Constitution.” For the avoidance of doubt, section 9 (1) of the Constitution provides that:

    “The National Assembly may, subject to the provisions of this section, alter any of the provisions of Constitution.”

    In line with the position of Senator Ita Enang, section 58(1) of the Constitution provides that “The power of the National Assembly to make laws shall be exercised by bills passed by both the Senate and the House of Representatives and, except as otherwise provided by subsection (5) of this section, assented to by the President.” In essence, the outcome of the Conference shall be brought before the National Assembly as a bill or as bills, as the case may be.

    Even the funds required to prosecute the Conference will require the input of the National Assembly as mandated by the combined provisions of section 59(1) and section 81(4) of the Constitution. Section 59 (1) of the Constitution provides:

    “The provisions of the section shall apply to-

    (a) An appropriation bill or a supplementary appropriation bill including any other bill for the payment, issue or withdrawal from the Consolidated Revenue Fund or any other public fund of the Federation of any money charged thereon or any alteration in the amount of such a payment, issue or withdrawal.”

    On the other hand section 81(4) of the Constitution states that:

    “If in respect of any financial year it is found that-

    (a) the amount appropriated by the Appropriation Act for any purpose is insufficient; and

    (b) a need has arisen for expenditure for a purpose for which no amount has been appropriated by the Act,

    a supplementary estimate showing the sums required shall be laid before each House of the National Assembly and the heads of any such expenditure shall be included in a Supplementary Appropriation Bill.”

    From the constitutional provisions referred to, it will be extremely difficult to ignore the National Assembly unless those canvassing such position want extra-constitutional steps to be taken, and that will be an infraction of section 1 of the Constitution, which provides as follows:

    “(1) This Constitution is supreme and its provisions shall have binding force on all authorities and persons throughout the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

    (2) The Federal Republic of Nigeria shall not be governed, nor shall any person or group of persons take control of the government of Nigeria or any part thereof, except in accordance with the provisions of this Constitution.

    (3) If any other law is inconsistent with the provisions of this Constitution, this Constitution shall prevail, and that other law shall to the extent of the inconsistency be void.”

    WHY PRESIDENT JONATHAN WILL TAKE THE OUTCOME OF THE CONFERENCE TO THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY

    The position of President Jonathan is a creation of section 5(1) of the Constitution, which provides that: “Subject to the provisions of this Constitution, the executive powers of the Federation:

    (a) shall be vested in the President and may , subject as aforesaid and to the provisions of any law made by the National Assembly, be exercised by him either directly or through the Vice-President and Ministers of the Government of the Federation or officers in the public service of the Federation; and

    (b) shall extend to the execution and maintenance of this Constitution, all laws made by the National Assembly and to all matters with respect to which the National Assembly has, for the time being, power to make laws.”

    Furthermore, the President took the Oath of Allegiance and the Oath of Office of President, contained in the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution. The Oath of Allegiance provides:

    “I, President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, do solemnly swear/affirm that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to the Federal Republic of Nigeria and that I will preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. So help me God.”

    On the other hand, the Oath of Office of President provides thus:

    “I, President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, do solemnly swear/affirm that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to the Federal Republic of Nigeria; that as President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, I will discharge my duties to the best of my ability, faithfully and in accordance with the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the law, and always in the interest of the sovereignty, integrity, solidarity, well-being and prosperity of the Federal Republic of Nigeria; that I will strive to preserve the Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy contained in the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria;….”

    One thing common to both Oaths is that the President swore to be faithful and bear true allegiance to the Federal Republic of Nigeria and to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

    Considering the principle of separation of powers, which is the hallmark of the presidential system of government, it will be incongruous for President Jonathan to raise a group of persons to make laws outside the purview of the National Assembly.

     

    THE WAY FORWARD

    The legal framework for the convocation of a National Conference should be sent as a Bill to the National Assembly for passage into an Act. The Bill will provide for a National Conference Commission to midwife the conference.

    Part of the contents of that Bill should be that the National Assembly would be bound to amend the Constitution to incorporate any decision on a matter approved by not less than 60% of the membership of the National Conference.

    The National Assembly can subject resolutions of the Conference which sails through by simple majority to public hearing before passing them. The parameters of the Conference should be determined ab initio to avoid delving into a political cul de sac. The members of the National Assembly should synergise with the Presidency to give Nigerians the long-expected change. This is a golden opportunity to have an autochthonous constitution. This is time to touch the so-called “no go” areas. It is not a time for grandstanding by the National Assembly members in order to prove their ultimate relevance. This is a time for sober reflection. We have come to a time to make Nigeria great again by cutting off the umbilical cord of serial failures in constitutional making.We can make all these happen by give-and-take from the two schools of thought. And it is possible to have a refined constitution from the ashes of the 1999 Constitution. I think I have merely scratched the surface of the matter, leaving other dimensions for other writers to provide illumination.

    Chukwuemeka Eze is the Principal Solicitor of Eze & Associates, a law firm based in Ikeja, Lagos.

     

  • ‘My fears about national conference’

    ‘My fears about national conference’

    What do you think of the Committee on National Dialogue set up by President Goodluck Jonathan?

    Well,the President has selected some persons to advise him. Whatever advice the members will give the President, let it be known that Nigerians shall not take another deception in the name of national dialogue again. I am convinced that President Jonathan and Senate President David Mark, would not be rooting for a conference now, if the country is normal. The President is on a very tight political rope right. PDP is unravelling. APC is looking more and more as a political alternative. Northern governors are rebelling. Rotimi Amaechi is threatening the president’s political ethnic base. So, the President has looked at 2015 and there is uncertainty on the horizon.

    Given all these that you have said, do you suspect a contrary thing happening in the polity aside from the dialogue?

    I suspect that the genuine desire of our people for a conference that will put a stop to all these blood letting, banditry and robbery in governance is being exploited again. Do not forget Military President Ibrahim Babangida had a national debate or dialogue in 1986, upon taking over power in a military coup. That dubious talk was on whether or not Nigeria should take the IMF/World Bank loan, which he later took anyway. Then, there was the political debate which led to the Cookey Report, and the two party system: SDP and NRC. General Sanni Abacha had his own constitutional conference, which led to the five parties that eventually endorsed him to transmute into a civilian president. President Obasanjo also had his own political conference, the outcome of which was vitiated by the third time virus. So, we have been having these conferences. As a matter of fact what successive administrations in this country, military or civilians have been doing is to counterfeit the idea of a genuine sovereign national conference(SNC) that the people who love this country have been advocating for since 1989.

    What do you mean by genuine national conference and who are these people you are talking about?

    They are those in the National Consultative Forum (NCF), led by eminent persons, including the late Mr Alao Aka Bashoru. They were the ones that sought to hold a  preliminary national conference at the National Theatre in Lagos in 1989 but General Ibrahim Babangida sealed off the venue. Since then, activists of the socialist persuasion and liberals have been agitating for an SNC. The Campaign for Democracy that followed the NCF, and which was led by Bashorun, and later Dr. Beko Ransome Kuti championed the call, as well as Joint Action Committee on Nigeria ( JACON), led by the late Chief Gani Fawehinmi.

    Is what we are having now different from the original conception of the SNC?

    The original conception was that it was going to be a conference of interest groups, including labour, professional and religious bodies and states of the Federation. Later, Chief Anthony Enahoro’s Movement for National Reformation (MNR) started agitating that it should be a conference of ethnic nationalities, which is now the popular view. What successive governments have been doing is to hijack this noble idea, counterfeit and rubbish it. Of course, we need an SNC. Nigeria is at a cross-road. From all parameters of development, Nigeria is becoming an experiment in failure: education, health, infrastructure, technological advancement, security, safety, governance. Everything is a shambles. Poverty, crime, corruption, despondency are killing us. We are in a state of war in the North East. Nigeria is now said to have the highest rate of kidnapping in the world and the bad news is that kidnapping will not go away. Why? Because since the advent of the Robbery and Firearms Decree, after the Civil War in 1970, Since the era of Oyenusi and Bar Beach Firing Squad show, through the Lawrence Anini  and Monday Osunbor era, armed robbery has not gone away. It has escalated. The state has lost direction. So, we need this SNC badly. We have not much time left. But we do not need another deception. Regardless of the motive of the President, let the people of this country insist on a conference, whose outcome will be a people-made, process-led draft constitution that will be adopted by the people in a referendum. The outcome must not be subject to the review or amendment of the President or National Assembly. If the plan is to have a conference whose outcome will be subject to the dictate of the President, and  National Assembly, then perish the thought. The conference will be dead on arrival. That is my fear.

    In all of this, where do you place the judiciary?

    Of course. The Judiciary is a branch of the government, at the central and state levels. The Executive and Legislative Branches are parts of the problem. How then do we expect the Judiciary not to be part of the problem. The Judiciary is not an island of virtue in an ocean of vice. However, it is fair to say that the Judiciary is the best of the three “evils”. It is the least corrupt of the “troika”. It has been self-cleansing. There have been purges of judges, lawyers are being sanctioned for acts of professional misconduct. Unlike the Executive Branch and Legislative Branches in which corruption is celebrated and glorified.

    What is your assessment of the various reforms being carried out by the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) since assumption of office?

    These reforms are good. Automating and computerising our judicial processes and mechanisms is good. Leading by personal example, as the CJN promised, when she took the oath of office is good. Punishing corruption is excellent. But these are not enough. The CJN should lead the campaign for the devolution of judicial powers that are unitarily concentrated at the “federal” level.

    Can you please expatiate on this?

    Advocates of devolution of powers and true federalism have been concentrating only on legislative and executive powers, without mentioning judicial powers. They talk about a bloated exclusive legislative list. They talk about VAT . They talk about state police. But they do not talk about the oddity of  one  Supreme Court of Nigeria, comprising 21Justices servicing the legal needs of a population of 170 million Nigerians. A court to which all appeals, civil or criminal, all over the country flow, apart from cases that are filed by the state governments and Federal Government under the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court in Section 232 of the Constitution. And there is no separate Constitutional Court to deal specifically with constitutional disputes among the governments. If we are truly federal, why can’t every state or region or zone in the country have their courts of appeals and Supreme Court, existing side by side with a Federal Court of Appeal and Federal Supreme Court? So, beyond the operational reforms, we need a structural reforms in the  judiciary.

    So, what kind of structural reform would you suggest for the judiciary?

    Just as the military restructured the legislative and executive arms of government it its own image, the military also tinkered with the Judiciary. We need to undo, what the military did. I am not so happy that the CJN could not use the force of his office and the strength of the NJC to resolve the Justice Isa Ayo Salami issue. It will go down in history as a failure. The NJC recalled a President of the Court of Appeal that was unjustly put on suspension, and President Jonathan disregarded the NJC and the Judiciary did nothing.

    Do you agree with the views expressed by Mr. President recently that corruption is not Nigeria’s number one problem?

    I listened to Mr. President and I felt sorry for him, Nigeria and myself. The President was trivialising a serious national problem, our number one problem. He was even blaming Nigerians that we blew incidences of corruption out of proportion. He said if we go to a child naming ceremony or funeral or birthday, corruption is the usual theme of discussion and that by over-discussing it, we have created the perception that Nigeria is very corrupt. He even alluded to the Corruption Perception Index to argue that corruption in Nigeria is not our biggest headache. That it is not a reality but a perception. He referenced Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda chief, to suggest that the charge of pervasive corruption in Nigeria has been so repeated that it is now assuming the picture of truth. Mr. President is wrong. He seems not to have a sense of history. Major Kaduna Nzeogwu in his coup speech in 1966 said that “our enemies are the political profiteers, the swindlers, the men in high and low places that seek bribes and demand 10 per cent; those that seek to keep the country divided permanently so that they can remain in office as ministers or VIPs at the least, the ‘tribalists’ the ‘nepotists’, those that make the Country look big for nothing before international circles, those that have corrupted our society and put the Nigerian political calendar back by their words and deeds” That was forty seven years ago. Successive military administrations, including the Buhari regime  said they came to fight corruption. Do we need to mention the years of the locust under IBB and Abacha? And when Obasanjo took over, in his maiden address, he said there would be no sacred cows. He came to fight corruption and ICPC and EFCC were established to fight corruption. The 1979 Constitution, 34 years ago, and now the 1999 constitution proclaims in Section 15(5)  that “ The state shall abuse all corrupt practices and abuse of power” in recognition of the place corruption occupies in our national life; and now the President says it is the figment of our imagination? If Mr. President says corruption is not as bad as we are making it, What is left to say?

    How do you see Nigeria 53 years after independence? Can we say it is a sovereign entity?

    It is doubtful if we can really call ourselves a “sovereign” nation or country. True, the Union Jack was lowered on October 1, 1960, and in its stead a new green white and green flag was hoisted, as a symbol of Nigeria’s nationhood or “countryhood”, if you permit our literary license, since we are not a nation, but a country of several nations;  and as a symbol of our “sovereignty”. But what kind of sovereignty was  that?. Some have argued that we merely had a flag independence, not political or economic independence. And I think they are right. Not even when Nigeria became a republic in 1963, did we attain political independence. And sadly up till  today, to the extent that most of our economic policies, which are formulated and implemented by the political system in our country, are dictates from the capitalist west and their Breton Woods  Institutions-World Bank and IMF, we are still in economic and political bondage. We must note that these dictates are not just mere dictations, but very harmful prescriptions. In the early 80s, during the Shagari Presidency we had austerity measures. In the late eighties, under the Babangida military regime we had the Structural Adjustment Programme,, and since then we have had a gross devaluation of our national currency, a negative foreign exchange rate, government organised asset-stripping carried on as privatisation of the economy, which reached  a frenzy during the Obasanjo Presidency and now the Jonathan Presidency.  The Bureau of Public Enterprises has been very busy, selling off collectively owned assets and resources of our Country. Meanwhile, the national economy is not improving. Massive de-industrialisation, mass unemployment and under employment, an escalating poverty level; very poor living conditions, etc.

    Our journey from independence has been very turbulent. From a peacefully negotiated but conditional release from colonial bondage, Nigeria emerged on October 1, 1960, as a neo-colonial state that undoubtedly had the human and material resources to transform itself, in little time, into an economically independent, socially progressive and politically mature modern state. Unfortunately, the deliberately skewed physical and political geography of Nigeria at Independence and partisan misconduct on the part of the new rulers conspired to frustrate the fulfilment of the dreams and the realisation of the expectation of independence.

    So, what is the way out of all these problems?

    Sadly, constitutional governance in the past 13 years has yielded little or no substantial dividends in terms of our human development index.The way out as I see it is for Nigeria to escape quickly from the grip of infantile disorders, if it had to grow and develop fully its potentials.

    What were the dreams of the founding fathers who fought for Nigeria’s independence?

    They had the dreams of building a good, prosperous, united, self-reliant  country, but collectively, they performed poorly.

     

  • Confab and confabulations

    Trust President Goodluck Jonathan to pull a rabbit out of his Fedora cap in injury times. After months of shilly-shallying and dilly-dallying on the issue, he has finally agreed to convoke a National Conference to address the fundamental problems facing the nation. But this was after the security and political situation has worsened and a raging civil war in his party has all but ended his chances of unimpeded renomination, not to say reelection. If he was expecting to be universally hailed for this, he would have been startled by the gale of recrimination from some important and influential quarters.

    Perhaps the greatest irony lost on Jonathan and his formidable political adversaries is that he had decided to convoke a National Conference at the weakest moment of his presidency, when he has his back to the wall. Heralded by a bizarre speech of sudden apostolic conversion and capitulation by the inevitable David Mark which dripped with venom and anger for anti-national forces that have brought Nigeria to heels, it was clear that the government was at the end of its tether. President Jonathan reminds one of the great French general who conceded that even though his flanks had collapsed and the centre was giving way, he was nevertheless proceeding on a major offensive.

    It is a reflection of the sheer opportunism, the lack of official clarity and the arm twisting surrounding the whole project that Jonathan himself put the heavy boot in even as he was being hailed in some quarters. By insisting that the decisions of the conference would be passed to a widely reviled National Assembly for vetting, Jonathan has ensured that the whole thing is dead on arrival. As it is today, the National Assembly suffers from institutional delinquency. Institutional delinquency occurs when a combination of genetic, sociological and historic infirmities prevents a vital national institution from fulfilling its mission and obligation to the nation. But this is a topic for another occasion.

    Yet there is a deeper political logic to all this which seems to elude just about everybody. In the absence of a truly transformative and redemptive world-historic leader, and given the structural deformation that has crippled the nation from birth, it was clear to most discerning Nigerians that a genuine National Conference was a historic inevitability. It would have taken an exceptionally visionary and patriotic leader to conduct such a gathering when he has all the aces stacked in his favour, when his legitimacy and authority are intact and have not been battered into submission by adversarial forces.

    Obasanjo for one did not avail himself of the historic opportunity. Had he turned his attention to the structural debility that has hobbled the nation at the end of his great demilitarisation project, he would have emerged as the founder and father of post-military Nigeria. But he temporised long enough for his hideous leadership failings to come into bold relief and for almost everybody to see that his so called National Dialogue was a tactical ruse to prolong his misbegotten tenure.

    Jonathan has shown himself to be a poorer reader of historical currents than even his mentor and benefactor. As at the moment and under his watch, his party is hopelessly factionalised and deeply fractured; the country is trapped between insurgent religious forces in the North and economic rebels in the deep South even as the rest of the nation groans under the extreme pathologies of a truly dysfunctional polity. Fear and hunger stalk the land.

    The grim paradox of our situation is that had we been running a true parliamentary system, the government would long have been out of power. And in a true presidential system, no party or president that has presided over such a gargantuan mess would dare show their face at the polls. Yet it is clear that despite its obvious and insurmountable leadership deficits, the Jonathan administration hopes to use the opportunity of a National Dialogue as a strategic ruse to engineer a huge national confusion which will eventuate in the dismemberment of the country or the elongation of its miserable tenure through a state of emergency.

    Opposition figures and other concerned nationals who have poured scorn and vitriol on the dialogue surely have their political antennae properly tuned. But it would amount to a fatal error of political judgment to surrender the strategic initiative by boycotting the conference. Opposition should not be fixated on electoral victory because given the current circumstances, elections alone can no longer resolve the national conundrum.

    But there is often some meaning embedded in meaninglessness. It is in the interest of higher patriotism to help Jonathan and his politically challenged Ijaw hegemonists out of the historic quagmire they have trapped themselves, just as it is important to let a core North that has learnt nothing and forgotten nothing know that Nigeria can no longer survive along the lines of the old status quo. This is the only thing that makes sense in the pervasive senselessness of these terrible times.

  • National Conference: Let a thousand flowers bloom

    National Conference: Let a thousand flowers bloom

    In a speech delivered in Peking in February 1957, the Chinese revolutionary communist leader, Chairman Mao Zedong, made the famous and much quoted assertion that “Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting progress in the arts and the sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land”. The slogan of allowing the free expression of a diversity of views and ideas was utilised to mobilise the Chinese intellectual community to openly critique the country’s socio-political and economic system and offer alternatives under communist rule.

    Unfortunately, Chairman Mao and the communist party did not live up to the promise of creating a fertile environment for the free expression of contending ideas especially those not supportive of the status quo. Thus, many members of the intelligentsia who took the state at its word and openly expressed non-conformist views were persecuted and several even executed. Indeed, the suppression of alternative ideas and the imposition of a single purported and sacrosanct truth on society bred the political insularity, bureaucratic lethargy, administrative complacency and economic stagnation responsible for the gradual decline and ultimate fall of authoritarian communist regimes across the globe.

    On the other hand, liberal democratic political systems have proven more successful in promoting virile civil societies, thriving, even if still largely inequitable economies and dynamic innovations in science, technology and entrepreneurship that ensure the continuous progress and collective well- being of society. The context for this liberal democratic success is the protection of the rights of free thought, expression and association, the sanctity of the rule of law and respect for the dignity of the human person irrespective of class, faith or tongue. Thus, the individual is free to think the unthinkable within the limits of the law. The minority is able to have its say with the understanding that the majority view prevails. This liberal political culture allows individual creativity to flourish and enrich the communal fund of ideas for the collective good.

    In fragile societies like ours characterised by ethnic tensions, communal strife, sectarian intolerance and the unsavoury consequences of persistent socio-economic underperformance, there is the tendency to be suspicious of the unfettered expression of ideas as a threat to national cohesion and stability. It is this fear that had hitherto fuelled the opposition over the years to persistent demands in some quarters for a Sovereign National Conference. In this regard, President Goodluck Jonathan’s re-think of his position on the issue and endorsement of the desirability of a national dialogue, after several years of being averse to the idea, is a remarkable watershed. To the best of my knowledge, there is no fundamental disagreement as to the necessity of a national dialogue but a divergence of opinions as regards its timing and the suspect motives of the ruling party in the context of the country’s extant political configuration.

    Of course, we can understand the President’s dilemma in arriving at a firm decision on whether we should have a national dialogue, conference or conversation as well as the status – sovereign or otherwise – of any such deliberation. Can you have a sovereign conference when there are already in existence representative assemblies and governmental authorities at all levels elected through the exercise of the sovereign will of the people as expressed at the polls? Can you have a genuine sovereign national conference with the incumbent president, governors, local government chairmen as well as federal and state legislatures and their political parties holding firmly on to power? Will that allow for fairness and a level playing ground for contending socio-political forces? Will those who wield governmental authority at all levels in the country today willingly abdicate their offices to allow the emergence of ‘neutral’ umpires that can superintend a credible conference to usher in a new political dispensation?

    Even if the outcome of the national conference is subjected to the decision of a referendum as widely suggested, will the population to participate in such a plebiscite be imported from another planet? Will the structures and processes that will guide such a referendum not be the same as the ones that supervised past flawed elections that critics claim are not truly representative of the popular will? Will the outcome of the referendum not reflect the spatial population distribution and geo-political fissures as well as proclivities that presently subsist in the country?

    It would appear to me that we are faced with two options. The first is to have an outright revolution that sweeps away the current political order and offers us a tabula rasa to build a brand new constitutional structure. The second is to seek to deepen prevailing institutional structures and processes and utilize them to bring about desired constitutional and political changes in a gradual and incremental manner. Even though it will be slower and more exacting, the latter is clearly the more realistic and practicable option.

    As the experience of the Presidential Advisory Committee on National Dialogue in Edo State on Monday shows, Nigerians hold very strong, passionate and divergent views on the state of the polity and the way forward. It is unlikely for any group or tendency to be able to successfully impose its viewpoint on the rest of the country. The only way forward is to ensure mutual respect for contending ideas and opinions – allowing a thousand flowers to bloom. Those who are opposed to the conference must be as free to voice their view as those who fervently support it. This is with the understanding that the majority will always have its way in accordance with democratic tenets and the minority its say once the processes are credible and transparent.

    The two main actors in the Edo drama – Governor Adams Oshiomhole and Colonel Tony Nyiam (Rtd.) – represent critical tendencies in the on-going debate on the country’s political future. Colonel Nyiam was a central participant in the Major Gideon Orkar-led abortive coup against the Babangida regime in 1990. He is one of the lucky few that survived the failed coup attempt unlike others who paid the ultimate price. The architects of the Orkar coup had announced the excision from the country of the far northern states in what was clearly an ill-thought out, superficial and rash response to the complexities of the country’s national question.

    To be fair to Nyiam, he has since then given far more careful consideration to the national question and its resolution. His book, ‘True Federal Democracy Or Awaiting Implosion?’, published in 2012 is a very thoughtful and useful contribution to the quest for a new just and more equitable constitutional order in Nigeria. Those who perceive the national question from the prism of ethnic relations will no doubt identify firmly with Nyiam’s world view. If he can restrain his temper and be more accommodating of other views, Nyiam can make invaluable input to the quest for a viable constitutional framework for Nigeria.

    On his part, Oshiomhole’s viewpoint is informed by his background as a labour activist and trade unionist. Labour ideologues place greater premium on the social question – the relationship between social classes – rather than inter- ethnic relations. The exploited workers and peasants are united by their common experiential reality of impoverishment or inequality irrespective of their faith or ethno-regional origin. In the same vein, membership of the tiny minority of exploiting classes cuts across divergent nationality groups.

    Even then there are points of convergence between Nyiam and Oshiomhole. The former in his book laments that “Our political leaders are more interested in sharing rather than baking of the national cake”. The latter in his comments at the Edo Town Hall meeting decried the emphasis on the politics of sharing rather than wealth creation. With a little more mutual respect, tolerance and accommodation, we can converse in a cultured and matured manner without avoidable acrimony. Allowing a thousand flowers of thought to blossom is the key to a sustainable democratic order.

  • A dialogue without power

    A dialogue without power

    President Jonathan’s decision that the national conference will report to the National Assembly makes the whole affair a waste of time and money

    Less than a month after President Goodluck Jonathan unveiled his ambition to set sail on a national conference, his ambition has begun to unravel. He has said that the report of the national conference will be sent to the National Assembly for approval.

    This statement exposed the whole definition of the conference from the presidency’s point of view. He sees the national conference as a mere opportunity to dialogue without power. If the conference had a fundamental power to re-enunciate its dreams, redefine its ethos and politics, restructure the nation and vouchsafe our past to a future rippling with clear vision, why would it report to the National Assembly?

    This has not only exposed President Jonathan’s parochial standpoint on the matter, but also clarified the contrast for those who have called for a sovereign national conference. The difference between both positions is now potent. For Jonathan, the conference will be an anaemic affair, even if full of debates, disagreements and the theatre of backslapping. It could debate the issue of state police, the cartography of revenue allocation, the furies of insecurity and the darkness cast over our education system. In the final analysis, the lawmakers will decide what they want and what to discard. Has the same National Assembly not been engaged in such parley across the country in the name of constitutional amendments? What results have emanated from them?

    According to the Jonathan agenda, once the conference has completed its work, the presidency would append its assent.

    For those calling for a national conference of the sovereign type, the issue is more sober. It entails a representation of people from all over the country, covering ethnicity, geography, class and tendencies. The result will not be subject to any special institution like the National Assembly, the presidency and it is above the power of the courts for any sort of adjudication. It is a sovereign in miniature having embodied the soul of the entire nation in trust.

    This means the sovereign body cannot be appointed as perfunctorily as President Jonathan has done. It is a matter of national survival and progress. If, as President Jonathan has declared, the conference representatives will not be hamstrung by any fetters, including the issue of the survival of the nation, why would they want any existing institution to decide on the wisdom or foolishness of their submissions?

    The conference, among other things, will discuss the essences of the presidency and the National Assembly. It will decide how the representatives are elected, what powers they should wield, what kind of funding they could amass, how they relate to the electorate and the limits of their swagger. As it regards the National Assembly, it will also have to deliberate whether we need a National Assembly, or whether we need a bi-camera or uni-camera legislature, and the modes of representation and operation.

    In the sort of debate and powers without fetters, the sovereign national conference could decide that the way both institutions are constituted do not chime with the popular will. If that is the case, the National Assembly suffused with persons who might want to retain the status quo, may decide to assign the full report of the conference to a committee, and the process may end up restoring the status quo for the National Assembly. Not just that, other aspects of the report that today’s decrepit elite may oppose may become subjects of lobbying.

    At the end, fundamental aspects of the report would have been either deleted or diluted, leaving for the presidency a corrupted version of the people’s will. The presidency, also aware of its interests, may do same.

    The people’s position would have been compromised, and the final copy a mockery of intense work done by the people’s representatives.

    But if the people have finished their work, what will be left? It will be subjected to a plebiscite, and the majority of the people will be asked to either endorse the document or reject this. From historical examples, such conferences often exercise tremendous power because they are a precursor to a fundamental change in the way things are run. Its existence necessarily curtails powers of all institutions as they pertain to the conference’s powers.

    No chief executive or legislature can assume powers over those of the conference. Those may be the nuances that are troubling President Jonathan and his fellow travellers. That accounts for their decision to subject the people’s will to a coterie of interested men and women.

    Other nations have passed through that process, whether it was the United States, Britain, France, Germany or even South Africa. It is not often a tea party. It offers an opportunity for unflattering introspection. Every tribe or region or class will spill its views with unvarnished candour, and the conference will have to distill every word or body through the rigour of debates and sundry other engagements. It is an opportunity for histories and cultures of different parts of the country to collide and align.

    That is why we have called a national conference a dialogue with power, not one as ritual. If we follow the pattern President Jonathan has set in motion, we cannot avoid the conclusion that it is another exercise in squander-mania and diversion. It is a rigmarole that will lead back to where we have always been. It is a dialogue without power.

  • Better a national conference on corruption

    Better a national conference on corruption

    Nigerians, no, the  entire world, had known that corruption, not  even structure, is Nigeria’s greatest undoing

    It will be pretty difficult for any accusation of not wanting a national conference, called by whatever name, to be sustained against me. In articles upon articles on this page, I tried to call the rulers’ attention  to the need for a national conference at which Nigerians can take hold of their destinies by vigorously interrogating what manner of an ideal federal structure they should put in place to right the wrongs of amalgamation to which Nigerians made no contribution. I will rely on only two of such articles to properly situate my objection to the National Conference which the President recently pronounced and about which I will advise Nigerians not to invest much hope. The articles are: Why President  Jonathan  Should Convoke A National Conference Now,  19 May, 2013 and North’s Unnecessary Fears May Create A Federal Monster, 4 August, 2013.

    I began that of 19 May, 2013 by quoting from a forthcoming book by Professor Banji Akintoye, where he wrote: ‘If the Arewa North’s resistance to the restructuring of the federation continues to remain immovable, and the rest of Nigeria continues to be impotent to overcome that resistance, then indeed the much-to-be-feared mass uprisings will be more likely to come, and Nigeria will be more likely to break up’.

     I went further to say that “Under successive Northern Heads of state, civilian and military, scant if any , attention was paid to sustained  development policies in education or Agriculture, entrepreneurship, integrated rural development, large infrastructure procurement  in  roads, rails and transportation generally,  heavy industries, venture capital and micro-credit systems for small businesses development etc; failure to do which the Nigerian nation is reaping now in multiples, not only in crass under development but even in home grown terrorism. I then concluded as follows: ‘In order to build a peaceful, prosperous and powerful country that will take its rightful place in the comity of nations, there must be a deliberate move on the part of Mr President to structurally rejig Nigeria in a manner that will empower each part to  have autonomy  over much of its own affairs, so  that  each can develop at its own pace, practice whatever religion and adopt whatever economic models  that will  best suit its citizenry’.

    Unfortunately, that was at a time when the President believed, and was, indeed, confident, that his party, the PDP, was strong enough to again ride roughshod and make a mince meat of the small parties masquerading as opposition.  But two totally unexpected things happened. Like a bolt from the blues, and for the first time ever in Nigeria, three opposition political parties, the ACN, CPC and the ANPP with a vibrant wing of APGA, merged and were accordingly  registered by INEC as the All Progressives Congress, but worse was to come when the seemingly impregnable PDP crumbled; with a group of seven governors, a former Vice President and sundry other leading lights of the party dramatically walked out of its mini conference in  Abuja to form a splinter group.

    And the president panicked

    This so-called National conference is therefore the result of a Presidential think tank that went into over drive to get the President a breathing space. And he sure needed one with Boko Haram not going anywhere, in fact wreaking  more havoc and literally attacking at will,  the economy, on its belly as  result of massive oil thefts and a consuming 2015 presidential election ambition. The opposition, both internal and external, the think tank must have surmised, must  not only be checkmated  but must be maximally distracted while a distraught  President and his handlers ups the ante towards the 2015 elections which has since assumed a do or die status and for which he can give an eye. This obviously was why a President, who had raved and spurned the very idea of a national conference, could  suddenly turn a full 360 degrees to declare  a national conference with gusto and with the spectacle of  a national conference’s enemy-in-chief, the Senate President, David Mark, tagging along jauntily. They must both be congratulated for successfully believing that majority of Nigerians can be successfully fooled and going ahead to give it a try. This conference is the very equivalent of bones to the dogs and Nigerians are eagerly going to be at it for a while before they know what hit them. Or how many reports of this President’s many committees have seen the light of day critical though, we were told they all are? While the late President Yar Adua killed off issues  by remitting them to his National Security Adviser Mukhtar, example being the celebrated  Ekiti PDP bribes to INEC officials in 2009, President Jonathan achieves the same purpose by referring them to up committees.  I hope this latest one will not last, anyway, since the President has  himself given the game away by, I guess, mistakenly divulging that the National Assembly will have the  final say on what all Nigerians would have wasted precious time discussing with all manner of tempers. Again, happily for those who can see beyond their noses, that is a National Assembly which, in a mere constitution amendment exercise that has taken like forever, is dubiously planning to  completely undermine the states whilst creating a centre with limitless powers. So all-encompassing is the autocracy it is currently constructing that one cannot be accused of exaggeration if he says that Abuja would be turned into a monster should they succeed in getting those totally anti-state laws passed. It’s funny members were not shame-faced the other day when, in a federation where the citizenry is clamouring for autonomy, they announced ,with glee, that ‘the House has voted overwhelmingly to give full financial, administrative, executive and legislative autonomy to local government councils in Nigeria; making them a tier of government with a uniform four years tenure, regimenting their mode of exercising legislative power and abolishing Joint State Local Government Account which they replaced with the “Local Government Council Allocation Account.’  So, the least these fellows would do will be to shred any conference recommendation that  goes against their fascist tendencies by conferring any modicum of autonomy on states.

    Before Mr Walter Carrington, former U.S Ambassador came the other day to lay it bare in Ilorin, Nigerians, no, the  entire world knew that corruption, not structure, however warped,  is Nigeria’s greatest undoing. Declared the former envoy as he was being awarded a honorary degree at the University of Ilorin: “corruption is the most terrible monster that confronts Nigeria, and, I am certain that virtually all the problems associated with governance would be removed if we can summon the courage to tackle corruption and banish it from our activities adding that development does not have a bigger enemy than corruption and also that the development of Nigeria is hinged on ridding politics from corruption and corrupt practices’.

    Should we need a home grown ‘Carrington’ on corruption, Opeyemi Agbaje should please step forward. Wrote Agbaje on the consequences of corruption not too long ago: ‘‘Corruption means that at least 100 million Nigerians live on less than a dollar per day; it means that thousands of infants die before their first birthday due to poverty. It means that life expectancy for the average adult Nigerian is less than 50 years; that millions of destinies are ruined as lack of educational facilities ensures that individuals who have the intellectual potential to be university professors end up only as primary school teachers! I am convinced that corruption has reached a stage at which, if not drastically curtailed, it will destroy Nigeria’. The reality is, indeed, far worse since it means high and  intolerable maternal deaths, pensioners dying on queues, court decisions going to the highest bidder, two different auditor’s reports for same company, police ex torsions and armed gangs claiming they too want their own share of the largesse, to mention but a few. Not surprisingly, a recent study has shown that not jut te Nigerian police, but its ant-corruption agencies, namely, EFCC and  ICPC themselves,  rank highest in corruption.

    Can somebody, in view of al these and  the deleterious consequences of corruption on our country, please tell Mr President to convert this national conference to one on CORRUPTION?

    That way he would serve Nigeria better than by this stampede to nowhere

  • National Conference… Jonathan’s talking shop

    National Conference… Jonathan’s talking shop

    Mine is a country of 175 million people, who speak more than 500 languages and are renowned for their inability to get along. Blame usually falls on colonial map makers, and it is well-deserved. But the reasons for our national discord are complex — certainly much too complicated for most of the international media to fathom — so news accounts of the multiple antipathies among our 250 ethnic groups are usually telescoped into what is known in the trade as boilerplate: the Muslim North battles the mostly Christian South for control of Nigeria’s oil wealth.

    As a journalist, I know the difficulties of summarising the world’s mad doings. Take the bewildering violence of Boko Haram. I’m as confused as anyone by the Islamic terrorist movement’s motivations, tactics and goals — perhaps because they themselves seem just as confused. In the beginning they were against southern Christians living in the north, and blew up churches to prove it. Now they’ve gone beyond attacking establishment figures to slaughtering their own people — even children — on the grounds that they are against Western education.

    Though he won’t exactly admit it, our president, Goodluck Jonathan, shares this confusion, but — given the dignity of his office and the reality that elections are little over a year away — he apparently feels he must make a show of shoring up national unity. Thus, earlier this month, Mr. Jonathan inaugurated the Advisory Committee on National Conference/Dialogue. The name is unwieldy, the goals uncertain, and the chances of success dubious.

    The fact is that our divisions are more nebulous than we Nigerians are sometimes inclined to admit. There are, for example, as many Muslims as Christians among the Yoruba people in the south. Still, it would be unfair to suggest that Nigerians, like people everywhere, don’t have stereotypes about our fellow countrymen.

    I happen to be a member of the “fun-loving” Yoruba (as the British characterized us back in the early days of colonialism). We have a reputation for being hotly argumentative, charmingly treacherous and highly pragmatic, as loose in our morals as we are in our religion — at least according to the Igbo, the other dominant ethnic group in the south. On the other hand, it is said by some Yoruba that the Igbo would be willing to sacrifice their own parents in the pursuit of money, which they get largely by trading, sometimes in drugs.

    As for all the “minorities” in between, there’s no telling what they get up to in their myriad languages, which few understand, even if we all speak English.

    So what, then, was the reasoning behind the president’s call for dialogue — a call that took everybody by surprise? For one thing, the timing was odd: Why, after 53 years of independence, after civil wars, military coups, rivalries over oil, Boko Haram’s murderous insanities and the brutal military response that may well tear the country apart, do we suddenly need such a conference?

    Actually the answer is simple. We don’t, but the president does. Elections are expected in early 2015, and Mr. Jonathan intends to run for a second, four-year term. But civil chaos and spreading corruption scandals do present certain difficulties. Still, Mr. Jonathan is a schooled politician, and it is clear that he has learned his lessons on how to navigate through seemingly unsolvable problems: When you need to divert popular attention and buy time, you can always call … a conference!

    The president has been careful not to spell out any specifics. He has merely constituted an advisory committee to deliberate on “the nomenclature, structure and modalities” of the eventual Commission for a Dialogue or Conference. Nigerians are taking this bureaucratic gobbledygook in stride: The conference is widely dismissed as just another “talking shop.”

    If national unity is so important, many people are asking, what stopped Mr. Jonathan from calling for one at the beginning of his tenure? Few of us are really fooled; we understand the realities of power in a country where the scramble for office is a do-or-die affair. Political power, after all, is the only game in town that ensures unfettered access to the nation’s oil riches.

    Yet it would be unfair to suggest that Mr. Jonathan has overseen the most corrupt government in Nigeria — not least because it would be difficult to be more corrupt than its predecessors. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, between independence in 1960 and the return of democracy in 1999, Nigeria’s leaders and their accomplices stole close to $400 billion.

    Nevertheless, recent scandals offer plenty of room for comparison. One concerns newspaper accounts alleging that Nigeria’s minister for petroleum resources, Diezani Alison-Madueke, routinely awards crude oil contracts to hastily registered companies fronted by people not previously known to be involved in the industry.

    Another involves accusations that the aviation minister, Stella Oduah, squandered $1.6 million on two bulletproof cars worth about a quarter of that amount. This comes just weeks after yet another fatal plane crash, the seventh under her watch. Repeated calls for the dismissal of these ministers have been ignored.

    Nigeria is convening a conference on national unity when we should be clamoring to end the corruption that lies so close to the heart of our ethnic, sectarian and civil discord. The decision to empanel a “talking shop” made of handpicked delegates who are uncertain about the exact nature of their assignment — beyond the fact that it will continue to provide them with their own slice of the national cake — fools no one.

    Given the ever-present danger of Nigeria’s implosion — brought about by militants in the oil-producing Niger Delta, Islamic fundamentalists in the northeast, ethnic cleansing in the north central region and kidnappers everywhere you turn — we fractious Nigerians are unified by one salient truth: We all know that we cannot continue like this.

    •Maja-Pearce is the author of Remembering Ken Saro-Wiwa and Other Essays

    •Culled from New York Times

  • Our position on National Conference, by Afenifere

    Our position on National Conference, by Afenifere

    For two decades, the pan-Yoruba socio-political group, Afenifere, has been agitating for a Sovereign National Conference (SNC) to discuss the basis for peaceful co-existence among the diverse ethnic nationalities. But the group has now moderated its demands by supporting the decision of President Goodluck Jonathan to forward the report of the proposed conference to the National Assembly for ratification , following a referendum. Chief Ayo Adebanjo presented Afenifere position at the stakeholders’ forum organised by the Okurounmu Committee in Akure, Ondo State capital.

    How do we successfully transit from the current chaos, underdevelopment and disunity in Nigeria to a stable, harmonious and prosperous country? No doubt, we have to create our future in Nigeria and make it happen. Unless we make it happen, it is high time we knew it is not going to happen. The secret is to define nationhood in the Nigerian context and make a successful transition from a pseudo-federal union to a proper federation. And that transition requires leaders who are courageous enough to move Nigeria out of the present intensive care unit where she lies prostrate. If we continued to do things the same old ways, we will continue to get the same old results every time.

    That is why without conducting a genuine National Conference in Nigeria, there won’t be any stable democracy, development and sustainable peace.

    We are at a stage where there is no room for error because we are at quarter to midnight. It is either we ‘federalise’ Nigeria and put it on a peace and prosperity footing or it will decay in limbo the way the current structure intends.

    It is against this background that we welcome the Chairman and members of the Presidential Advisory Committee as you criss-cross Nigeria to take inputs into this onerous task that the God Almighty has used President Goodluck Jonathan to saddle you with.

    Mark our words, generations down the line would be eternally grateful to you and your names painted on the canvass of history, if you painstakingly carry out this assignment and guide Mr. President properly to give us a genuine National conference.

    Why a conference?

    Since the President’s announcement of the proposal for a National Conference, a lot of arguments have ensued which are quite  revealing.  While there has been popular  acceptance of the idea, there have also been a few dissenting voices. The naysayers can be classified into two categories: those who benefit from the present rot and are not ready to give up their privileges and those who genuinely lack sufficient understanding of the need for a National Conference. We must persuade the two groups. The first category should know that whatever they gain at the bend presently will be lost at the round-about if we don’t restructure the country. And for the second group, we must be able to show them the vertical linkbetween the peripheral issues of corruption, lack of infrastructure, unemployment and the unitary structure of Nigeria presently.

    In this wise, we want to allay the fears of those who have been psychologically programmed to believe that the essence of a National Conference is to break up Nigeria. Rather, a National Conference is the best opportunity at the moment to save Nigeria from a crash land. A National Conference in our context is therefore, a veritable platform to correct the “mistake of 1914.”

    What is the 1914 mistake?

    Sir Frederick Lugard, a freelance imperialist, who promoted the scramble for Africa, became Governor-General of the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria and, in 1914, amalgamated the North and the South of the Country, which act was criticised by some British politicians:  “After all, these haphazard blocks of scrub and desert, peppered with ill-matched tribes, had neither geographical nor political unity…” See Thomas Pakenham: The Scramble for Africa Page 675

    Margery Perham,  Lugard’s  biographer in her comments on 29 September 1960, regarding Nigeria’s independence published on Page xii of the Times of London said: “But it may be said, whatever the necessity or indeed the brilliance of his achievement as High Commissioner, this should have been no more than a preliminary settlement for the north and that he should not as Governor-General, have imposed it on the south.”

    Nigeria, which is the name given by Flora Shaw, Lugard’s would be wife, is an amalgam of so many ethnic nationalities, empires, kingdoms etc. the constituents of the amalgam being heterogeneous, were independent nationalities with a number of which the British entered into independent agreements as  separate  autonomous independent states.

    Thus, for example, Treaty with Lagos was signed in 1852 for and on behalf of Her Majesty’s the Queen by Commodore H.W. Bruce and JohnBeecroft Her Majesty’s  Consul  in the Bights of Benin and Biafra and the King and chiefs of Lagos on the part of themselves and their country. Another treaty with Lagos in 1861. Then, a treaty of 1884 with the Chiefs and people of Asaba  requesting the chiefs and their people to refrain from entering into any correspondence, agreement or treaty with any foreign nation or power etc.

    Also, with Sokoto, a treaty of 1885, another treaty with Sokoto in 1890. Two separate treaties in 1884 with the King and people of Opobo.

    Then, in 1893, a treaty with Abeokuta.

    See Sir Alan Burns: History of Nigeria 7th Edition Pages 328-339.

    All Most Nigerian leaders acknowledged the fact that Nigeria consists of a number of nationalities.

    In this regard, note what each said: (i) Regarding the 1914 amalgamation as being wrong, Sir Alhaji Ahmadu Bello said: “The mistake of 1914 has come to light and I would like to go on further. I was referring to the amalgamation that took place in that year between the old independent governments of Northern and Southern Nigeria”

    Sir Ahmadu Bello: My Life Page 133.

    (ii) “ Since 1914 the British Government had been trying to make Nigeria into one country, but Nigerians themselves were historically different in their backgrounds, in their religious beliefs and customs and did not show any sign of willingness to unite. So, what it comes to is that Nigerian unity is only a British intention.”

    See Alhaji Tafawa Balewa: Nigeria Legislative Council Debates, 4 March 1948 page 225.

    See also O. Arifalo: The  Egbe  Omo  Oduduwa  1945-1965 page 80.

    (iii) Awolowo referred to “Nigeria” as mere geographical expression.

    See Obafemi Awolowo: Path to Nigerian Freedom Page 47

    (iv) During the first meeting of the Council of Ministers over which Sir John Macpherson presided, he referred to the diversity of Nigeria, saying: “…not only to the diversity of race, religion, language, vegetation, and climate, but also to the differences in stages of development.”

    See British Documents on the End of Empire Series B Vol.7 Part l, Note 155 co1039/1 of 26 Jan.1952 page 439

    We may safely add the contribution of General Ibrahim Haruna, Chairman  Arewa Consultative  Forum, to those who have canvassed the fact that Nigeria consists of a number of ethnic nationalities.

    He said: “The country Nigeria started from being divided. We are never one. It was the process of history that brought us together. The British did not meet us as one country. The country Nigeria started from being divided.”

    See Compass Newspaper 29 November 2009

    Nomenclature 

    There has been a lot of debate on whether the conference should be called a National Conference or Sovereign National Conference. Some have argued that we cannot have a Sovereign National Conference because there is a government in place. We are not anarchists to ask that the existing government structures be dissolved for the people of Nigeria to be able to sit down and talk, even when our stand is that  sovereignty belongs to the people of Nigeria from whom the existing government derives all its authority.

    We seriously need a peoples’ conference. The major contentions with all effort at constitution making in Nigeria since 1922 is that the people have not been allowed to own the process and produce an  autochthon-ous constitution.

    It is not the business of government to write a constitution, but the people. Democracy does not necessarily produce a government that represents the majority. In fact, the attached document to our memorandum, which gives a statistical analysis of the results of the 2011 elections, graphically shows that most of the governments at different levels in our country were put in place by a little fraction of the population.

    We have chosen the governorship elections, which is the most popular to show how abysmally low the figures of those who take interest in elections are in Nigeria. If a similar exercise were to be carried out for the results of elections into the National Assembly, the figures would make many of those attempting in vain to rob the peoples of Nigeria of their sovereignty to bury their heads in shame.

    Be that as it may, we insist on the National Conference with sovereign powers as far as decisions it reached are concerned. The role of the existing government on the decisions of the conference would be only  implementation.

    The only process that would be able to alter any of the decisions reached at the conference is a referendum of the Nigerian peoples.

    Afenifere right from under the direct leadership of Chief Obafemi Awolowo being consistent in asking that the nationalities in Nigeria must sit down and discuss their union and agree on a Federal Constitution to guarantee stability, justice ,peace ,real unity and development borne out of autonomy for the constituent units.

    The Yoruba nations remains the only leg of the “big three” that has never questioned the corporate existence of Nigeria either in form of “Aburi” or “ARABA “, in spite of the many provocations of the events of 1962 and 1993.

    It is in that spirit that we still ask our compatriots to let us come together at the table of brotherhood to discuss our situation.

    Now,we speak to issues in your terms of reference:

       The structure of the conference

    As Nigeria has failed to attain nationhood fifty three years after independence, it means that the Nationality question is the most urgent business to be resolved.  Afenifere  therefore asks for a National Conference of Ethnic Nationalities (being the founding entities of the amalgamation) in the main but with accommodation for civil societies, religious leaders, labour, students and other special interests.

    Delegates to the conference should emerge through elections. For this purpose, we suggest a conference of not more than 700delegates with 100 delegates from each of the six geo-political zones and the remaining 100 representing special interest groups.

    The 100 delegates from each of the zones should be elected on the basis of 10 per cent representation for all established ethnic nationalities organizations in the zone while the remaining 90% would emerge from equal number of elected delegates from all senatorial districts representing the  traditional ethno-geographical contents of the region.

    There shall be a Zonal Conference Committee (ZCC) for each zone to supervise the electoral process.

    The ZCC shall be composed of men and women of proven integrity from within each zone.

    Legal framework for the conference

    We accept the fact that the President is the convening authority, he should make the necessary proclamations  to give legitimacy to the conference. This is consistent with the order -in-council that promulgated the 1960 Independent Constitution.

    Duration of the conference

    we suggest a six-month duration for the conference from inauguration broken down as follows: (i) one month for debates on conference agenda and agreement on how the country should be constituted. (ii) Three months for constitution drafting. (iii) one month for conference to adopt the draft constitution (iv) One month for referendum on the draft constitution to be conducted in all the zones with the wishes of majority of zones being final.

    Agenda for the conference

    It is our considered view that to arrive at the agenda for the conference, there is a need for well-crafted and carefully thought-out questions to be discussed very thoroughly at the level of each geo-political zone. The agreed answers at the level of each zonal debate will form the agenda of the conference. Questions to be sent should include but not limited to: (i) Philosophical foundation of the Nigeria State: Federal, Confederal or unitary (ii) Form of government – Presidential or Parliamentary (iii) Structure of the Nigeria State: – Two-tier system – Three-tier system – Four-tier system (iv) Legislative list – Exclusive list – Concurrent – Residual (v) Revenue Generation/Allocation (vi) Law Enforcement, Defence and National Security (vii) Economy (viii) Judiciary

    Legal procedures on constitutionalising the outcome of the conference

    The constitution produced shall be promulgated by the National Assembly repealing  Decree 24 of 1999 that brought the existing constitution into operation. This is within the law making powers of the National Assembly. There is a precedent for this in the action of Parliament in 1963, when it replaced the 1960 Independence Constitution with the Republican Constitution of 1963.

    We therefore, propose that the draft constitution from the Conference of Nations within Nigeria shall immediately be taken to a referendum, after which the President will forward an Executive Bill to the National Assembly, which shall enact it into law without tinkering with any of the decisions, since they would be acting as agents of their principals who are the people of Nigeria.

    Once we have a constitution for the Federation, the federating units  would then proceed  to write their own constitutions based on the new powers and functions that have been negotiated and devolved to them.