Daily Independent Online.
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Wednesday, July 07, 2004.
As the Constitution is being reviewed (1)
By Igho B. Oghoghorie
E-Mail: [email protected]
The daily dispatches on the National
Assembly Joint Committee activities on the review of the 1999 Constitution are
clearly pointing to an irreversible path towards re-writing the Book of Common
Prayer of the Nigerian project, and the country moving on to a smooth canvas of
moderation and stability.
That Nigeria needs to embark on urgent constitutional
reform is not in doubt. Democracies do not always choose good governments,
while able and experienced men are not always wise. A country’s governing
class can be carried away by its own consensual instincts that it loses contact
with political reality. This democracy, like many others the world over, needs
checks and balances; but Nigeria’s age-old problem is that checks become
blockages and balances stalemate - and it is not difficult to see why.
The 1999 Constitution, bequeathed on the nation by
the last military regime has attracted so much bile, like no other before it.
It has littered over it numerous landmines, which only the most sure-footed
constitutional soldier can avoid. What has therefore emerged since this
democratic dispensation is a nation lacking cohesiveness and meaningful
development. Steadily but almost imperceptibly, ethnic and religious violence
are getting worse, the atrocities more brutal and the hatred more corrosive.
This state of affairs have led to persistent calls by
various geo-political groups for fundamental reshaping of the polity, in the
form of convening a National Conference where the component parts of the
country can reflect on the many lingering defects of the Nigerian Project. The Federal Government in October 1999,
in response to these constitutional defects, set up a Presidential Committee to
review the Constitution with a view to “sustain the corporate existence
of the nation and attain true federalism”. The National Assembly in May 2000 also set up a 72-member
Committee to assess the desirability or otherwise of the clamour for a
Constitutional Conference. This
initiative finally led to the inauguration of the 80-member Joint Committee in
October/November 2003.
Yet this National Assembly move at constitutional
re-engineering has appeared to critics as much a formula for political
bickering, as it is a framework for constitutional change, not least on its
limited constitutional mandate to embark on “amendment,” and not
“review”; and the overriding need for a National Conference to deal
with the inherent defects in the system.
The arguments for and against the convocation of a
National Conference are worm by repetition. On almost all sides of the debate we see Manichaeism, the
ascribing to the other of all qualities of malice and to your own side all the
virtues of light and good intention.
For the South West and South East zones, a national conference is desirable
to address, amongst others, the issue of equitable and fair distribution of
appointments into the federal civil service and federally-owned public
institutions such as the police, the military and other securities services.
The situation in the South-South presents a different
picture. While the region is
broadly sympathetic to the idea of returning Nigeria to true federalism, its
main concern is the battle for the control of the oil and gas revenue derived
from its territory, having been called upon for so long to pay an undue price
just to keep Nigeria one. It is a
battle the people of the zone believe they must win in order to regain some
degree of respect in the Nigerian Federation.
The position of the North, which, for this purpose,
includes the Middle-Belt, is far from resolved. While there exist some
enthusiasm for a National Conference, the main thrust has been that
constitutional reform should be the exclusive preserve of the National
Assembly. It is therefore apparent from the various positions of the
stakeholders that the convocation of a National Conference, though desirable to
rework the Nigerian project, risks wandering outside the territory of
reasonable debate into the quicksand of geo-political prejudices.
True, the Joint Committee’s efforts at this
constitutional review is seen in some quarters as content-free, and is
currently being challenged at the Federal High Court, Abuja; it is at least a
start. Ideally, constitutional reform ought to be popular; indeed, the support
ought to be passionate. In constitutional reform, it is easy to leave the
stability of the riverbank, but it can take a century or more of floundering
before one reaches the security of the far side. What is now needed is to give
fillip to the National Assembly’s efforts with a view to making the constitutional
reform agenda a success.
There are already a plethora of proposals put forward
for consideration by the Joint Committee, not least the need to dismantle the
over centralisation of power at the center through the transfer of a number of
Items from the Exclusive legislative list (Federal) to the Concurrent
legislative list (Federal/States). These include, amongst others, Items 7 and
59 that deals with the borrowing of moneys within or outside Nigeria for the
purpose of the Federation or of any State, and the Taxation of incomes, profits
and capital gains.
