By Oduwaiye Fela
What would you say, to use Chinua Achebe’s memorable term, is the trouble with Nigeria?
The trouble with Nigeria is monumental. The country’s structures
are wrong, its system of government is wrong, and the policies of the
party in power are wrong. Can right come out of so much that is wrong?\
Do you think that the Immunity Clause — as set out in the
Constitution — has contributed to the level of corruption in public
office today?
Certainly! There may be a strong case for immunity to apply to the
Head of State, but there can be no case for immunity to apply to the
Head of Government from the consequences of his misdeeds!
What value can the PRONACO Conference add to the production of a people’s constitution?
It is a vital aspect of the PRONACO approach that the options
should be explained to the public, and that the decisions of the
conference should be submitted to a popular referendum, for a free
choice by the people.
— Chief Anthony Enahoro, interviewed by Pini Jason, The Achebe Foundation Interview Series # 21, January 2006.
STARTING in the 1990s, the ethnic nations entrapped in Nigeria, first
by British conquest at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of
the 20th, then by the 1960s Civil War, and now by the fraudulent 1999
Constitution, have been making unrelenting calls for a Sovereign
National Conference (SNC) to address their concerns and improve their
plight, through making a new Peoples Constitution. Chief Anthony Enahoro, through his Movement for National
Reformation (MNR), as well as the Pro-National Conference Organisation,
(PRONACO), which was its successor, began the demand. Stimulated by Pa Enahoro’s initiative of the early 1990s, there has
emerged a huge community of persons, groups and organisations who are
fully committed to jettisoning the fraudulent 1999 Constitution because
they believe that force and fraud cannot remain the basis of the
Nigerian Union.
The 1999 Constitution has been rejected by most sections of
Nigerians: armed militants like OPC, MASSOB, MEND, and even the BOKO
HARAM terrorists, are violent manifestations of that rejection. Non-violent manifestations have included PRONACO, NADECO, CHANGE
NIGERIA, the Yoruba National Assembly (YNA), as well as The Movement for
New Nigeria (MNN), which is a partnership of the Lower Niger Congress,
the Middle-Belt Congress and the Federation of Oodua People. The
Southern Nigerian Peoples Assembly (SNPA) has also added its efforts to
this project. For the past 21 years, the steadfast and unmistakable purpose of
these groups and initiatives has been to get the Nigerian Government to
convene the SNC that would midwife a democratic People’s Constitution
that structures a true federation of Nigeria’s nationalities for their
sustainable unity and development. So that should be the natural objective of President Jonathan’s
National Conference if it is intended to help solve the problems that
have bloodied Nigeria and endangered Nigeria’s continued existence.
Where do we go from here? And by what democratic process can we give ourselves a truly People’s Constitution?
The process: OUR need to jettison one constitution that is unacceptable to the
majority and devise another to replace it is not unique in political
history. We have the brilliant and globally celebrated recent example of
South Africa to learn from. What F. W. De Klerk did in South Africa was to make a lame duck of
the Apartheid Constitution while a new democratic constitution was
negotiated. For Nigeria, the De Klerk option means making a lame duck of the
fraudulent “federal” 1999 Constitution while a new, truly federal and
transparently democratic People’s Constitution is negotiated.
Luckily for Nigerians, President Jonathan has finally listened to
the two-decade-long clamour for a Sovereign National Conference to lead
us to a People’s Constitution. If he follows through to the end of the process, he will go down in
Nigerian history as the liberator who allowed Nigerians to transform
their country from a feudalist fake democracy to a genuine modern
democracy. He will be Nigeria’s De Klerk. That would turn out to be the
unheralded but most important part of his Transformation Agenda. Despite this encouraging start, we should bear in mind that De
Klerk’s predecessor, P. W. Botha, actually started the process in South
Africa by beginning the contacts that led to the release of Nelson
Mandela, but then backed off under pressure from some diehard Afrikaner
Apartheid fanatics. De Klerk eventually replaced him and saw the process
through. So, we must mobilise to ensure that GEJ plays De Klerk and not
Botha.
So the main task now is for the SNPA, YNA, PRONACO, NADECO, MNN,
Middle Belt Coalition, etc., to lead and mobilise the people to support
the De Klerk option as the way to get a people’s democratic constitution
that would address the numerous issues troubling the polity, issues
that these groups have highlighted in their various communiqués and
declarations. If we adopt the De Klerk option, all the sitting elected officials
in Nigeria today can stay on as lame ducks till a new Union based on a
People’s Constitution emerges.Let’s put where Nigeria has arrived today in comparative context.
In 1961, Nelson Mandela had written to Hendrik Verwoerd, the Prime
Minister of Apartheid South Africa, asking him to convene a national
convention at which all South Africans would be represented, to draw up
“a new non-racial and democratic constitution.”
Mandela’s letter was ignored whereupon the ANC embarked on armed
struggle. As Mandela himself later admitted, he had no illusions that
they could win a military victory. The objective was to get the
government to talk with the ANC. That national convention was not to start until December 1991, and
was named the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA). It had
taken 30 years of organised and steady pressure from within South Africa
and from the Global community to bring the Apartheid regime to the
negotiating table.
Similarly, in 1992, Pa Enahoro began asking the Nigerian Government
to convene the SNC to return Nigeria to true federalism. Now, after 21
years of mounting internal Nigerian pressure, the first step has been
taken towards a National Conference that could lead to a People’s
Constitution and true federalism for Nigerians.
In 1961, when it asked to meet with the Apartheid government to
negotiate an end to Apartheid, the ANC already had its Freedom Charter
in hand as the basis for a democratic constitution. In 2006, the MNN and its PRONACO allies produced their Draft
People’s Constitution. And the task since then has been to get Abuja to
agree to negotiate a change from the 1999 Constitution to a People’s
Constitution. The Draft People’s Constitution emerged from the Peoples National
Conference that was organised in 2005-2006 by PRONACO. The Draft PRONACO
Constitution provides a guide on how Nigeria can be returned to a true
Federal Union.
Since the inception of Nigeria, this Draft People’s Constitution is
the only constitution known to have emerged wholly from the unfettered
participation of the ethnic nationalities in Nigeria and it has been
openly endorsed by a majority of the ethnic nationalities because they
participated in its making and it answers to the issues of vital concern
to them — issues, which they blame on the present Constitution. Now that Abuja has finally stepped out, however tentatively, on the
road to a National Conference, this transition can at last begin.
Towards a negotiated transition to a New Nigeria
IN a democratic era, the renegotiation of Nigeria needs to be done
transparently, and seen by all to be done by a democratic process. And
the place to do that is at the SNC and the Constituent Assembly that
should follow it. This transparent process would distinguish the constitution of a
New Nigeria from the 1999 Constitution, which was not the result of any
transparent or democratic process. Prof. Omoruyi has pointed out about
the failed IBB transition programme that one of its errors was the lack
of “international involvement for the entire transition process.” International involvement by election monitors on the day of
election was far from enough to protect it from its sworn Caliphate
enemies. Those same enemies are still with us. We should learn from that
costly failure and get the UN involved to monitor our De Klerk option
right from now, as was done in transitions in Angola, Cambodia, etc.
CODESA was the all-party congress that negotiated the route to a
Constituent Assembly that would draft a constitution for post-Apartheid
South Africa. Taking into account Nigeria’s peculiarities, the National
Conference now being discussed should be an all-nationalities conference
to negotiate the terms for a Constituent Assembly that will draft a
constitution for a post-Caliphate-Colonial Nigeria. It should decide the
fundamental principles that will bind the Constituent Assembly — in
particular it should decide on vexed questions like secularism or
theocracy, Democracy or Shari’a, the criteria for federating units,
power distribution between the federating units and the federal govt. Those who reject its decisions would thereby opt out of the New
Nigeria and should be required to withdraw without disturbing the peace
of the rest of us.
News-Portal
Nigeria © 2013
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