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 Daily Independent Online.
* Friday,July 16, 2004.
One constitution not good for the country, says Kanu
By Bolaji Adepegba
Senior Correspondent, Lagos
The need for every nationality to have a constitution
in the Nigerian federation was brought to the fore in Lagos Tuesday by a
chieftain of the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), Rear Admiral
Ndubuisi Godwin Kanu, as he presented this year’s Annual Wole Soyinka Commemorative
Lecture.
The lecture, which was organised as part of the 70th
birthday celebration of the Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, by
the National Association of Seadogs aka Pyrates Confraternity, was the
seventh in the series.
“Maybe my sources are limited, but I am not aware of a
federation where there is only one constitution. Rather (and if it is not
so in any other country, it must be so for Nigeria) in a federal country
of different and diverse peoples, the federating units (nationalities/peoples)
should each have their own individual constitutions. After all, and in
reality, they are the ones that surrender - from all sovereign rights
residing in them - some rights: exclusively to the centre; concurrently
to the centre and residually in those areas not surrendered/compromised
by them in any way,” Kanu said.
He therefore posited that to arrive at a Nigeria that
can run effectively as a federation, the different nationalities in the
country would have to inevitably come together and have a national
conference. According to him, any Nigerian who wants the country to
survive will embrace the idea of the different nationalities in the
country having a dialogue that will return Nigeria to a federation, like
the one that subsisted in the First Republic.
He said: “The national conference, dialogue by the
peoples of the country is a positive-driven exercise. It is not divisive:
what is divisive is any continued or delayed commencement of the
conference.”
Berating the unitary system of government in a
multi-cultural and multi-lingual Nigeria, Kanu said that the size of an
ethnic group does not in any way make it lower in status to another.
Drawing inference from the equal right to vote any member country as in
any international organisation like the United Nations, the Economic
Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and other bodies regardless of
the size of their population, Kanu proposed that every nationality be
represented at the conference, which is going to look into the
constitution that will form the basis for their co-existence.
Unless this is done, Kanu said, “even if the ruling or
any other political party or any new political party wins tomorrow,
Nigeria will continue in the negative business of facing forward but
running backwards. In fact, things can only get worse”.
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