The People’s Republic: Constitutional basis

CONTINUED FROM LAST WEEK

If a country is bi-lingual or multi-lingual, the constitution must be federal; and the constituent states must be organized on a linguistic basis.

(4) Any experiment with a unitary constitution in a bi-lingual or multi-lingual or multi-national country must fail, in the long run. We would like to add that we have arrived at these principles after very careful study and analysis of the constitutional evolution of every state in the world. We, therefore, regard the principles as conclusive, because the method which we have adopted is that of summative induction.

According to John Stuart Mill, induction is ‘that operation of the mind, by which we infer that what we know to be true in a particular case or cases, will be true in all cases which resemble the former in certain assignable respects.” More than two thousand years earlier, Aristotle had described induction as ‘ A passage from individuals to universals.” It will be seen, therefore, that we have done much more than is required by the rules of induction. We have employed the summative method of induction because we are aware that we are dealing with human institutions which are very liable to substantial variations, and because it is both possible and much safer, to employ this method, in the present instance. The phenomena under investigation are not only all of them ascertainable but are also all open to direct study and analysis.

We have set out as fully as possible in Thoughts On Nigerian Constitution the facts from which the principles we have just enunciated have been deduced. And we make bold to declare that these principles will hold good as long as the hearts of the vast majority of human beings continue to be ruled more by passions, emotions, individual wills, and self-interest than by objective reason and the pursuit of generally beneficial common goals.

Indeed, these principles will continue to hold good as long as mankind remains divided, as at present, by language, culture, and disparate social objectives. As we have emphasized again and again on other occasions, it is of very great importance for practical politicians and constitution-makers to bear in mind that the more educated the people ina nation become, the more hardened and distinct are their language and culture.

Since, as we have said, these principles are conclusive and inexorable in the long run, it is imperative that, in their own interests, all countries in search of a suitable constitution should adhere to them most religiously. It is particularly so in the case of Nigeria and other developing countries. A nation groping more or less in the dark, and striving for bare subsistence, cannot afford to depart from laws and principles which are sufficiently verified, and from routes which are well charted, to embark on experiments which the empirical verdicts of history declare to be utterly ruinous. The strains and stresses which such experiments will generate are bound to worsen, excessively, the already dismal economic and social plight of the country concerned, and imperil the liberty of the citizen.

As we have noticed, one of the things which a constitution does is to prescribe the organs of government. These organs are three, namely: Legislative, Executive, and Judicial. But there are various forms of government. We will deal with the forms of government first before turning our attention to its organs.

In its long and tedious progression since the beginning of recorded history, mankind has tried various forms of government, such as theocracy, gerontocracy, autocracy, oligarchy, tyranny, ochlocracy, democracy, etc. From all available historical evidence, however, and having regard to the composition of the state, it is clear that the best of them all is democracy. It may be mentioned, in passing, that this proposition is substantiated by the fact that even those who practise autocracy, tyranny, or oligarchy are so conscious of the inferiority of this form of government that they give it the label of democracy, in order to pass it off to their less sophisticated fellow citizens and foreign observers as the ideal.

The inherent characteristic of democracy, which distinguishes it from any other form of government, is that it posits the ultimate principle that political power or sovereignty belongs to the entire people of a state rather than to the few or the one, and that it is the entire people of the state who are entitled to exercise this power for their own benefit. This proposition raises two important questions. Why does political power or sovereignty belong to the entire people? And how do the people exercise their inherent power or sovereignty?

We have noted the constitution of the family. There, the paterfamilias regards himself, and is looked upon by the other members, as the trustee of the entire family. He does not need to be told or instructed that the power which vests in him belongs to all the members of the family, in that he never has any doubt in his mind that he is in duty bound to wield such power only for their benefits. In this connection, the youngest member of the family counts as much as the oldest. On occasions when he has to consult the views of the other members of the family, it is to the able- bodied mature members that he turns. He does so, because it is the latter who contribute more than others to the needs and the wants and the material possessions of the family; it is also they who are called upon, from time to time, to defend the family against external foes; and in any case, after many centuries of trial and error, it has been established that, other things being equal, their judgment is more reliable than that of the younger and less mature members of the family.

CONTINUES NEXT WEEK

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