My takes on constitution amendment

By Ochereome Nnanna
BETWEEN 2005 and 2006, the regime of President Olusegun Obasanjo started elaborate amendment of the 1999 Constitution. He empanelled the National Political Reform Conference (NPFL). The effort died on the floor of the Senate due to Obasanjo’s insertion of a clause seeking to extend his tenure.

Shortly after being elected in 2011, President Goodluck Jonathan also inaugurated the Justice Alfa Belgore panel to review outstanding issues of our constitutional conferences since independence. On Tuesday, 12th July 2012, the Committee submitted its report.

Based on this, the National Assembly embarked on the latest round of large-scale amendments of the constitution. Bearing in mind that during President Umar Yar’ Adua’s reign the constitution was also amended, we are left with the grim conclusion that every regime will have to tinker with the constitution.

We are in this constitutional mess because the military bequeathed a document that is simply unviable, inchoate and discreditable. It is like trying to patch a structurally flawed building which has developed cracks all over.

I have always maintained that we need to write an entirely new constitution that will usher Nigeria into a new century devoid of the weaknesses, mistakes and mischief that ruled our crisis- and conflict-riddled first century as a nation founded by a foreign colonial power and dominated by internal regional overlords. It gave way to violent rebellions, a civil war, coups, counter-coups, and currently terrorism.

We must come together and evolve a constitution that will exorcise the demons of centralised federalism, which is a legacy of our colonial and military past.

It is amply evident that the only viable and credible system of federalism suited for Nigeria is one that decentralises power to the six geopolitical zones. This is the most adequate grouping of Nigerians based on principles Professor George Obiozor terms: “contiguity and consanguinity”.

Violent agitations in the country’s history were rejections of our centralised federalism. The failed secession of the Eastern Region (Biafra) was a flee to safety from a country unwilling and unable to protect its innocent citizens under attack.

The many failed counter coups carried out by officers of the Middle Belt (Col. BS Dimka’s coup of 1976, Major General Mamman Vatsa’s coup of 1985 and Major Gideon Orkar’s coup of 1990) were rebellions against Muslim North’s domination.

The campaign for the revalidation of Chief Moshood Abiola’s presidential mandate from 1993 to 1998 championed by the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) with activists from the South West zone as the spearheads was a struggle for power shift and true federalism.

The armed struggle of Niger Delta militants that lasted between 1998 and 2009 was a struggle for Resource Control. In 2000, Sharia riots swept through the Muslim North, after the Governor of Zamfara State, Alhaji Sani Yerima, unconstitutionally declared full implementation of the Muslim law.

Thousands of lives were lost. Today, the Boko Haram insurgents have taken up arms to implement the same Jihadist agenda, killing thousands of people across the North and sparking off the ongoing emergency rule. The handwriting on the wall is simple to decipher: Muslim North also wants true federalism where they can live their Islamic cultural life to the fullest.

Every major group has violently indicated its yearning for full, decentralised federalism. So, what is holding us from simply putting it into effect? Why have all constitutional efforts since the end of the civil war avoided it, opting to sustain a glorified unitary system that has failed to build the nation?

Therefore, my take on our constitution is that of total re-engineering, starting with the empanelment of a constituent assembly.

The National Assembly’s attempts to amend the military constitution will continue to fail. The Assembly is arrogating to itself the power to give Nigerians a constitution through the back door by amending a faulty military constitution.

In the subsequent parts of this article I will examine whether the 1999 Constitution is truly supreme. I will declare my stand on the controversial issues of immunity, autonomy for the local governments and creation of states.

Deportation of Igbos from Lagos

WHEN I first heard about it I could not believe it until the details were everywhere in the media. A detachment of officials of the Lagos State Kick Against Indiscipline (KAI) bundled 70 indigent Nigerians of Igbo extraction and dumped them on the shores of the River Niger at Onitsha and sped back to Lagos!

It was a display of deep seated barbarism and an assault on the citizenship rights of Nigerians whose only sin was that they were indigent non-indigenes. Since I have not heard where the Lagos State Government (LASG) has dumped similar citizens of Lagos and South West extraction, it is difficult to dismiss accusations of xenophobia against the LASG.

I find it curious that an LASG that, since the days of the leader of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Bola Tinubu, as the Governor of Lagos, has responded to the electoral support of non-indigenes with concession of posts within his government to them, has now resorted to this inciting and uncivilised hostility to non-indigenes under Governor Raji Fashola.

I do not support the mass migration of people without means of livelihood to Lagos or the urban areas. People like that have better uses in the native communities than to become pests in the cities. But the LASG must approach the cleaning of Lagos streets of mendicants and destitute persons in a decent, lawful and wholesome manner, ensuring that no particular ox is gored. Lagos should go about its “mega-city” business with lessons learned from other great societies that have travelled the road.

The growing rudeness and aggressiveness to non-indigenes must stop. Lagos is our national commonwealth. It was built with the oil wealth of the former Eastern Region as the capital of Nigeria before being handed over to LASG in December 1992 when the seat of government moved to Abuja.

There are millions of Igbos and non-indigenes doing big time business, providing employment and paying through their noses to the coffers of the LASG. Non-indigenes make the Lagos economy tick, while the indigenes simply milk their effort. The scanty Igbo down-trodden in Lagos are entitled to care of the government because their virile and affluent brothers who control all the markets in Lagos, enrich the coffers of the state to the tune of billions of Naira monthly.

LASG must find a better method of moderating the complex social situation in the state because the resort to “Area Boy” strategies will not help anyone. Besides, those deported might have found their ways back to Lagos already!

 

Senator Pius Ewherido: It is well!

BY SUNNY AWHEFEADA

SUNDAY June 30 did not begin as an ominous day. However, by the time the day drew its curtains it had become ominous and tragic as it went with Senator Pius Ewherido, who until that black Sunday represented the Delta Central Senatorial District at the National Assembly.

Senator Ewherido’s death is a devastating blow which diminished all of humanity. Ewherido to his Urhobo people was akin to an only palm fruit that must not be lost in the fire. He was an Uloho (Iroko) which provided shelter and succor to all and sundry. To Deltans, he was a voice of courage with a regenerative vision. He carried with him a redemptive charisma for a people and state in search of new and alternative political possibilities. He was an apostle of a new value system.

Where now is Ewherido who gave scholarship to over 200 students? Where now is Ewherido who gave jobs to the jobless? Where now is Ewherido who built roads and bridges where the people had given up? Where now is Ewherido who built schools and health centres in remote and almost forgotten parts of Urhoboland? Where now is Ewherido who gave economic empowerment to 200 women and numberless youth? Where now is Ewherido who almost singlehandedly sponsored the project to get Urhobo language into WAEC/NECO examination syllabus? Where now is Ewherido who brought light and water to places that had given up on electricity and pipe-borne water? Where now is Ewherido who mourned with the bereaved and danced with celebrants? Where now is Ewherido who bestrode Delta State like a colossus? Where now is Ewherido who in less than two years in the Senate sponsored four Bills and over 10 motions, a feat some 20 senators could not achieve in 12 years?

[caption id="attachment_404582" align="alignnone" width="412"] Valedictory Session for Late Senator Pius Ewherido: Family of Late Senator , Mrs. Pius Ewherido and her children at last respect to Late Senator Akpor Pius Ewherido after Senate Valedictory Session in his honour at National Assembly Abuja. Photo by Gbemiga Olamikan.[/caption]

Born 50 years ago as Pius Akporokena Ewherido, he was popularly called Gogorogo. He attended primary and secondary schools in the defunct Bendel State before going to read Philosophy at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife where he finished as the best graduating student in his class. He later read Law at the University of Benin and was called to the Nigerian Bar. He burst on to the political stage in 1998 and for eight years he bestrode the Delta State legislature like a colossus.

Senator Pius Ewherido was neither a run-off the mill politician nor a political hustler. He never believed in the politics of the stomach. Ewherido’s politics was motivated by ideals and not hunger, greed and personal aggrandizement. He was until his last days a refined politician who saw politics as a means of getting power for the good of the people. He was first an Urhobo, but he had dreamt of a pan-Delta platform through which he could have launched the state onto the path of progress. When he made a go at the governorship in 2006 he came up with a development blueprint that awed everybody who cared to study it. While the other contenders were busy mouthing promises and devising schemes, Ewherido toiled for many nights trying to evolve a blueprint that would have been the equivalent of a Marshall Plan for Delta State.

The intrigues which robbed him of the governorship ticket during the primary election have now become common knowledge. After that fiasco he retreated with uncommon dignity to Ewu and went back to his business. He took everything with philosophical calmness. He read books, worked on his farm, took time to think and reconfigured his political future. His education in Philosophy came handy for him during this period. I remember spending many hours with him during which we discussed the politics of ancient Rome. At intervals he would dash into his well stocked study and bring out one book after the other. We talked about the many troubles with Nigeria and the lack luster governance that became the lot of Delta State. He gave hints of attempts by the powers that be to woo him to the corridors of power and how he resisted each attempt. He talked about principles, he talked about a viable opposition platform and how the generality of Deltans will be disappointed were he to yield to the advances of those in power. He kept his cool and bid his time.

The opportune moment came with the October 2010 Supreme Court ruling which ordered a re-run for the Delta State governorship election. An alliance between him and the leading opposition figure, Chief Great Ogboru, came to be. Ewherido proved to be a political game changer. He revived his intimidating political structures across the State and the result was the Ilalaja (pineapple revolution) which shook Delta State to its very roots. Ewherido rode to the Senate on the crest of the Ilalaja wind of change. Although, a first timer in a Senate of political denizens, although he was a lone party senator, Ewherido stood tall in tandem with his appellation gogorogo! Each time he spoke his voice and opinion were golden. He brought an uncommon intellectual insight into his legislative responsibilities while he was in the Senate. He was oratorical and spoke with the same courage the Roman senators he studied in his Philosophy course spoke. He once told me that he painstakingly researched almost everything that came to the floor of the Senate.

It was not too long before the Urhobo people saw in him a redeemer figure. In a landscape full of wily, crafty and selfish politrickcians, Ewherido stood out to be counted as different. He soon became a beacon of hope and the Urhobo people and Deltans began investing their political hope in him. When he was first approached for the governorship race last year he did shrug it off. However, pressure upon pressure came and he yielded after he discovered that the party that he helped stabilized for a remarkable outing in two elections in 2011 had suddenly become hostile and cannot even guarantee him a return ticket to the Senate.

He was one politician who put the people above every other consideration. It was for this that he became an unparalleled mobilizer of people.

*Dr.  Awhefeada, a  lecturer,   wrote from DELSU, Abraka, Delta State.