When President Goodluck Jonathan announced in his 2013 Independence Day broadcast to Nigerians the intention of his government to organize a national dialogue as a way of resolving the seemingly intractable security and political crises in the country, very few people, if any, disagreed with the necessity for such a dialogue.
Indeed, the opposition APC opposed the dialogue only in regards to timing. The reason for this near- unanimity on the necessity of a national dialogue is the general acknowledgement that the military-written Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 is a military Decree (Decree No. 24 of 1999) rather than a negotiated framework for peaceful coexistence of the people of Nigeria. In the past, many had challenged as a lie, the preamble to the Constitution which statesnthat:
“We the people of the Federal Republic of Nigeria Having firmly and solemnly resolve, to live in unity and harmony as one indivisible and indissoluble sovereign nation under God, dedicated to the promotion of inter-African solidarity, world peace, international co-operation and understanding.
And to provide for a Constitution for the purpose of promoting the good government and welfare of all persons in our country, on the principles of freedom, equality and justice, and for the purpose of consolidating the unity of our people.
Do hereby make, enact and give to ourselves the following Constitution ” because the people of Nigeria did not sit down to negotiate the document.
After fourteen years of unbroken civil rule, the failings and weaknesses in the document have become more evident with various peoples of Nigeria expressing frustration and marginalization with it and its operation. The
feeling is increasingly one of despair that this union is not working and that the state of this union is anything but strong. Attempts have been made albeit at huge financial cost to the tax payer to tinker with or amend
the document to make it workable but most informed Nigerians know that the amendments were merely cosmetic and failed woefully to address the critical concerns of the citizens. Some people have argued that when the foundation of a building is fundamentally defective, any attempt to renovate the superstructure without altering the substructure is a waste of resources.
In building construction parlance, you cannot tear down the walls of a bungalow to build a skyscraper on a foundation laid for a bungalow.
It is therefore generally agreed that for Nigeria to achieve her potentials and assume her leadership role in Africa and in the comity of global nations, its very foundation must be redesigned and re-engineered. As the most populous black nation on earth, Nigeria holds out enormous hopes for the black man all over the world. An economically strong and self-assured.
Nigeria should be a source of pride for Africa and for this reason; a united indivisible Nigeria remains an alluring objective. Nonetheless, without the right foundation and framework, Nigeria will remain a nation of unfulfilled potentials which increasingly runs the risk of implosion that could lead to destabilization of the entire West African sub region with negative global implications.
The consequence of the foregoing is that rather than pigeon-hole the proponents of national dialogue as agents of balkanization of Nigeria, we must seize the opportunity presented to work towards redesigning its foundation to enable it achieve its potentials as a strong, prosperous and proud nation.
Therefore, the national conference should not be seen only from the perspective of a Constitution-making arrangement even though that will be the ultimate product. Much more than that is the fact that it will provide a platform for the fundamental definition of our nationhood and citizenship. This is the key to creating a new Nigeria.
In crafting the US constitution, the delegates first voted and adopted the declaration of independence document. While that document is not the Constitution, it is the soul and spirit of the constitution and explains the dreams and visions of the founding fathers of that nation nearly two and half centuries ago. It was the desire to create a nation in which the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness will be paramount as encapsulated in the statement “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Every single provision of the constitution that followed is gauged on the basis of how it furthers or hinders the attainment of this fundamental objective.
Similarly, Nigeria should not just be one nation for the sake of oneness.
It must be a nation in which the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness must be paramount. Such rights must attach to each individual as a citizen of the country and each group of individuals however aggregated within the nation. In determining the aggregation of groups of people, our historical political experience shows a certain pattern of political loyalty that runs along ethnic lines. This has been the pattern since the
1940s. In the seminal work of Professor Ali Mazrui titled “The Path to Nigeria’s Greatness: Between Exceptionalism and Typicality’ published in USA/Africa Dialogue, No.9, the erudite Professor observed that “Nigeria’s typicality includes the fact that Nigerians are more strongly moved by socio-cultural ideologies than by socio-economic ideologies. Socio-cultural ideologies appeal to such cultural forces as ethnicity, religion, nationalism, race-consciousness and regional allegiance. Socio-economic ideologies try to appeal to such economic interest as class, economic equity, trade union right and the like. Marxism, ujamaa and most other forms of socialism are socio-economic ideologies.
Ethnicity, nationalism and regional allegiance are socio-cultural ideologies. In Nigeria, as in most other parts of Africa ethno-cultural ideologies are much stronger than ethno-economic ones.” Furthermore, according to Mazrui, his favorite Nigerian example was “Obafemi Awolowo’s effort to move Nigeria a little to the left. When he looked to see who was following him, it was not the dispossessed of all ethnic groups in Nigeria who followed; it was his fellow Yoruba of all social classes and levels of income.”
Some people may argue that Chapter IV of the 1999 Constitution which protects fundamental human rights is adequate with respect to the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness but these provisions are clearly incongruous with the issue of indigeneship that is at the root of inter-ethnic clashes across the nation just as they need to be reconciled with the overarching requirements of S.14 (3) and (4) on federal character.
Fundamental to these discordant issues is the unacceptable definition of the federating units that make up the Federal Republic of Nigeria. At independence, the federating units were the three regional governments and the central government. Within the three regions, minority ethnic groupings sought liberty from the oppressive dominance of the major ethnic groups which led to serious agitations for further subdivisions of the subnational governments without necessarily diluting or giving up their co-ordinate powers. The first democratically elected government went through constitutionally recognized processes to create the Midwest Region as an addition to the subnational federating units.
This process of self-actualization was however halted by the military intervention which subsequently used fiat to carve up the erstwhile regions into states that became the new sub-national federating units, however, the states were stripped of the powers they should have inherited from the regions to the advantage of a new powerful and domineering federal government controlled by an unrepresentative military junta. Subsequent efforts were focused on consolidating this anomalous power relations including decreeing them into the 1999 Constitution.
Understandably, different sections of Nigeria that were disadvantaged by military rule; the most vociferous of which is the South East geo-political zone, have protested against the perpetuation of this arrangement. It has therefore always been the hope of these groups that a national conference will provide a platform for redressing the wrongs of the military era as well as to retrieve the powers of the sub-national federating units from the central government.
It can therefore be seen clearly that the recommendation of the Okorounmu Committee on National Dialogue that delegates should be elected on the basis of the current federal constituencies created by the unrepresentative military administrations will perpetuate the wrongs rather than redress them as it will retain the overriding powers of numbers in the hands of the favoured groups. The other recommendation for nominated delegates representing interest groups will further worsen the situation since, on the most critical issues of power devolution and fiscal federalism, virtually every delegate will vote according to the desires of their ethnic and geo-political groupings.
Take the issue of fiscal federalism for instance, without a shred of doubt, decades of almost total dependence on crude oil export for funding of government budgets at all levels and for foreign exchange earnings raise palpable apprehension in non-oil producing States over the prospects of sub-national government control of their resources.
The apprehension is such that they have been unwilling to consider the socio-economic benefits of resource control in terms of its proven impact on efficiency in resource management for the overall benefit of the nation. It is unarguable that the relatively higher balanced and inclusive economic growth rates recorded by the Nigerian nation in the immediate post-independence years and the subsequent decline after the military intervention in governance has a direct correlation with the changes in national fiscal arrangements decreed by the military and sustained ever since by succeeding governments.
It is expected that this sort of economic postulation will be debated at a national conference in which majority ethnic groups will not have veto powers over the wishes and aspirations of others and that practical beneficial consensus can be reached on such issues.
On the basis of the foregoing, it is evident that the position of the Committee of Patriots on equal delegate representations for ethnic nationalities seems to provide the needed framework for the ethnic nationalities to give expression to their desires for equity in the Nigerian nation. Furthermore, it will help in finally properly defining what constitutes the true sub-national federating units in Nigeria.
Perhaps the most critical question that needs to be addressed is the transition from the current constitution to the expected outcome of the national conference. Obviously, it is imperative that nothing must be done to tamper with the rights of the federating ethnic nationalities to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness especially its abridgement by the voting powers of the favoured groups under the current constitution. It is to avoid such a situation that it has been suggested that the first step to the national conference should be the amendment of the current constitution to provide for its convocation and for its outcome to become a new constitution if approved by referendum of the ethnic nationalities. Without this critical step, many are of the view that we might as well not hold the national conference, in which case, it will remain a dream deferred with attendant instability and insecurity.
I am not unmindful of the current fluid power relations in the national assembly between the ruling party and the opposition and how that can hinder such an attempt at constitutional amendment however, there is no short cut to the right steps. The past cosmetic alterations of the Constitution have not helped the nation so far and it is unlikely that the fundamental issues raised above can be equitably resolved within the subsisting constitutional framework. We must therefore work towards a multi-partisan consensus on this issue for the sake of a stable future for our children.
By: CLEMENT T OFUANI
