Former Secretary-General of the Commonwealth of Nations, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, has said Nigeria needs an entirely new constitution to be formulated by elected representatives of its diverse people.
Anyaoku, who is the Chairman, National Constitutional Summit said Nigeria’s present 1999 Constitution, as amended, is incapable of addressing the nation’s pluralism.
The former Commonwealth Secretary-General, in his welcome address at National Constitutional Summit in Abuja organised by Eminent Patriots of Nigeria, yesterday, noted that the governance system derived from the 1999 Constitution, as amended, is not only non-inclusive, “but also induces overexpectation of the nation’s resources on administration rather than on capital development.
“Our present 1999 Constitution, as amended, is not such a constitution. It was not democratically formulated. It was instead imposed on the country through a decree by the military administration.”
Anyaoku decried the political and socio-economic situation in the country, particularly insecurity of life and property, poverty and infrastructure decay.
According to him, the present nation’s 36 federating units is incapable of “generating and sustaining the pace of national development achieved in the early years of Nigeria’s independence under the 1963 Constitution.”
He disclosed that the summit will discuss issues such as presidential or parliamentary system of government, tenure and rotation of heads of government at the national and subnational levels, unicameral or bicameral legislature, normative federating units, powers of the national and the subnational governments, structure of the security agencies, political parties and their organisation, management of the country’s resources, and indeed other important features of the constitution.
“And in considering the process of actualising the new constitution, I hope there will be new emphasis on ensuring that it is consolidated by representatives specifically elected for that purpose by the Nigerian people who, in order to give it legitimacy, would have to endorse it in a national referendum,” he explained.
He stated that the problems of the country will be reversed if Nigeria is given a credible and truly better constitution, democratically made by the Nigerian people.
A founding member of the Patriots, Gen Ike Nwa implementation of the 2014 National Constitutional Conference.
Nwachukwu who is the only surviving founding member of the group, recommended the adoption of French model of parliamentary system of government for the people, the independence of the electoral management body and state police.
Chief Solomon Asemota (SAN), who reflected on the Nigerian Constitution, said the nation’s Independence Constitution was tampered with for state of emergency to be declared in the former Western Region.
Asemota who rated the Independence Constitution above the present Nigerian Constitution, said state of emergency “is a weapon in the hand of colonial government.”
He called for a state of emergency in the development of the nation’s political parties, and expressed the belief that if the First Republic political parties were allowed to survive, the situation would have been different.
