Professor Abubakar Olarenwaju Suleiman, a former Minister of National Planning and incumbent Director General of the National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies (NILDS), in this interview by KEHINDE AKINTOLA, bears his mind on the 2014 National Constitutional Conference and other challenges facing the country.
There is widespread agitation for a new constitution for the country. What are your thoughts on the issue?
The country’s constitution, just like any other constitution, is a legal document; it is the law of the land. It is the principle upon which we all agree that guides the running of our society, economy, social life and so on. Again, the constitution is not something that is static; it is not something that is permanent in terms of document and convention. A constitution is a product of the people itself; it is amenable to changes, a dynamic principle law that guides society. A constitution, in most cases, is determined by the people. Situation might inform the need for you change certain things in the constitution. But by and large, to me, our constitution is not the problem. Yes, there is need for changes; review and amendment on issues that border on electoral process, devolution of power and federalism; on issues that border on certain aspect of our social lives. That is why successive National Assembly since 1999 has taking the bull by the horn by trying to review or amend the constitution, especially as it relates to our electoral process. But when you look at the country in the last 60 years on whether we have done well or bad, I think the problem has nothing to do with the constitution per say. Our failure as a people to develop largely has much less do with the constitution. Fundamentally, it has more to do with the operators of the constitution. We made the constitution, we are the architect but in most cases, our operators, the leaders and the led, we tend to twist the constitution to suit our own will and caprices.
The constitution is very clear on certain fundamental things but do we abide by it? That I can say no in most cases. That we are drawing back or lagging behind on certain fundamental issues has nothing to do with the constitution. It has much to do with the people that operate it. In any case, by concept, any legal document of a country is predictive, mostly predictive of the upper or ruling class of the society. The upper class, to a large extent, determines how they want constitution to go. If they want it to suit themselves, so be it! If they want to use it against someone, it will be so. So, talking from the pragmatic point of view, the constitution has become an instrument in the hands of the ruling and the governing class to do and do. Therefore, most people don’t respect it. The constitution mostly tends to be on the side of the ruling class. In any case, we are talking of the makers of the constitution. In the case of Nigeria, the makers are the followers; they are not the downtrodden; the makers are not the Talakawas. The drafters of the constitution in most cases are not the people. Quite frankly, I don’t have any problem with the constitution per say but the makers. They influence and twist it to suit their own interest.
Going forward, how can the people own the Constitution?
It is quite unfortunately that the constitutional amendments and conferences we have been having even before the independence are hardly taken into consideration the inputs of the masses. As far as the masses are not involved in terms of their wishes going into the document, it will be out of place to say we the people of Nigeria own this constitution. The 2014 National Conference has addressed a lot of problems we have in the country. Even the composition of the members of that Confab embraced almost all the interest groups in the country and they were able to come up with revolutions that if sent to the National Assembly for deliberation, something good would have come out of it. One of the best ways of Nigerians owning the country and perhaps addressing some of the fundamental national questions we have is for us to go back to that report of 2014 conference. We can dust the report; come out with some other bodies to look into it and forward it to National Assembly for deliberations. That will be a way out for us to address some of the problems in the country. A lot issues shoved aside in the past were mostly addressed by that conference and most of the major stakeholders from the North and the South-West agreed with that report. The only thing for Mr President is to forward it to the National Assembly. So, we don’t need any other Sovereign National Conference. From a reliable source, we got to know that the then government did not interfere with the deliberations at the conference; the composition was massive; the resolution tends to address a lot of issues affecting the country. We were close to addressing some of our fundamental national questions. It doesn’t make any reasonable sense for us if we keep on having reforms, conference and amendments without implementation. Let us start implementing them; let that be a point of departure to address some of the nagging fundamental questions in the country.
What about the call for the suspension of the Constitution as to pave the way for the enactment of a peoples constitution?
It is unfortunate that out of sheer politics, we are trying to suppress some far-reaching decisions. As long as we do that, we won’t be able to achieve anything. Agitation for autonomy, quest for independence, quest for financial autonomy, quest for self-determination, even quest for secession from other regions have been on for years and it will continue to be on. Don’t forget ours is a society with 250 ethnic groups of two fundamental religions, of different opinion and interest. It is normal.
Something is wrong with the nature of our federalism but I need to be frank too, moving forward as a nation at 60 and going by the good relationship Mr President is having with his immediate predecessor, I think there is need for Mr President to convene a Council of State meeting to address these issues. And one of the good things that Mr. President can do is to say the document submitted on the eve of taking over, let us look at it, however bad it is, let us look at it because our tax payers’ money was used on that document, time was wasted, people devoted their energy and resources to address and assuage most of the feelings of the agitators, let us start from there. I stand on the position that moving forward, let us look at the 2014 Confab report. Most of the issues being raised by the various groups are being addressed by the Confab report. Mr. President during the recent Edo election have spoken to Nigerians that he is a man that stand beyond partisanship. He should move forward from its to say look, it is better late than never, let us look at this document so that even before the National Assembly commence the amendment of the constitution, Mr. President can forward that confab report to the national Assembly. One of the legacies that Mr. President can leave for this country as we move towards 2023 is for him to give to Nigeria a country of their own, a country where all ethnic and religious groups will feel happier to belong to and the point of departure from that is to look at the report of the confab report of 2014.
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