Nation Building: the Panel Beater’s Approach

Nation Building: the Panel Beater’s Approach

By Sam Onimisi

So many important events are taking place at the same time such that a news hound like yours sincerely could not catch up with all of them at once. Until a phone call from a friend alerted me, I was not aware that President Goodluck Jonathan addressed the 16th Nigerian Economic Summit during which he made some disparaging remarks against the call for a Sovereign National Conference. What did he say? The President was reported to have said that Nigeria had gone beyond the call for the SNC and that our concern should be how to build a prosperous country. That was not all he said. He was also quoted as saying that the 1999 Constitution has prescribed how it can be changed and that attempts to change the law by other methods would be illegal. Having waited in vain for a whole week with the hope that the presidency will retract or correct the alleged statements, one is now free to believe that he was correctly quoted.
Let me declare some facts with which my locus standi on the issues raised by the president could be established. By God’s grace and through the auspices of the renown nationalist Chief Anthony Enahoro CFR, I was one of those Nigerians who participated in the Peoples National Conference of Pro-National Conference Organization (PRONACO) in 2004/2005. In fact, I served as its Secretary General and Chairman of its Committee on geo-political structure. PRONACO successfully produced an alternative constitution for Nigeria, far more suitable for the country’s plurality and designed to accommodate the heterogeneous nature of Nigeria in line with similar countries of the world. It must be noted that the subjects of constitution making and Sovereign National Conference are like Siamese twins as they are intricately interwoven. I suppose you now know why I could participate in the debate.
In the first place, no heterogeneous country on earth will ever go beyond a national conference of some sort - call it sovereign, independent or ethnic nationalities conference – until it has adopted a mutually agreeable formula of and for peaceful co-existence as a sovereign entity. Our ethnic, religious, linguistic, cultural and geo-graphical diversities are the sources of the divisive and centrifugal politics at play today. If past or pre-independence or post-independence constitutional conferences had succeeded and adequate, we would not be experiencing the intermittent ethno-religious and inter-regional combustion which now characterize our polity. It only means that past constitutions which culminated in the 1999 constitution have failed to reassure the federating units of Nigeria of their glorious destiny to which they aspire.
Secondly, the constitution is the fundamental law of any country to which all other laws are subject and subordinated, including the laws enacted by the Parliament. Therefore, it is dangerous for a multi-ethnic country such as Nigeria to delegate its constitution – making to an Assembly, the members of whose election were universally acclaimed to have been rigged. Beside, law-making as the business of the Parliament is different from Constitution making. It is a universal democratic practice to delegate the business of constitution making to a Constituent Assembly to make the fundamental law which law-makers will be elected to operate and adhere to. A mono-ethnic nation may concede constitution making to her law makers, since differences such as language; culture, ethnicity and religion are non-existent. Not a polygeny such as Nigeria!
More-over, all constitutional making process from independence to date has been flawed or disabled in that there were no equity or equality in participation; representation were more of artificial or arbitrary entities such as Regions or States than organic beings like ethnic nationalities. Even if we are to concede constitution-making to a select group of people, their product must be subjected to the views and choices of the populace through a referendum. Any Constitution that emerged from a referendum has obtained a democratic seal of approval or acceptance of the people. Which of the past constitutions up to 1999 passed this test? None!! And that is one of the reasons why the call for a national conference will not abate until one is held or the PNC of PRONACO is adopted. Again, there is no where in multi-ethnic countries where law-makers Assembly is a panacea to all constitutional problems. You now know why the call for a National Conference?
Through a national conference, ethnic, religious, linguistic, cultural and geographical grievances are tabled and thoroughly discussed and debated. Disagreements are subjected to the moral uprightness of participants and votes are taken to ascertain the voice of the majority; stalemates are resolved by consensus of give-and-take such that there are no walk-outs, until the conference ends. Whatever was agreed was the voice and choice of all which everyone is bound to believe in and defend. No one goes home with unresolved grievances or unanswered questions. This much I can testify of the PRONACO’s Peoples National Conference cum Constitution of 2005.
No good citizen has any problem with building a prosperous country; but they want to know what constitutes a prosperous country. The assumption that Nigeria has come far and had gone beyond constitutional talks is not based on realism. Those countries that have gone beyond talks are making waves in the economic, scientific and technological spheres of their national life. That we are still engaged in the battle of zoning is one pointer that rather than going beyond, we are going under into the precipice. Why pretend to have attained a height yet out of reach?
The Yoruba West detested undue interference in their regional affairs and vehemently fought it with ‘operation we tie’ from 1962 – 1966. The Tiv now of Benue State fought the same battle around the same time. From President Jonathan’s Niger Delta, Isaac Adaku Boro rebelled against unitarism in 1966, a fight which Ken Saro Wiwa continued with his pen and for which an amalgam of freedom fighters known as the Movement for Emancipation of Niger Delta (MEND) took up the gauntlet. The Igbo East kicked against domination and fought a three-year Civil War through the banner of Biafra to retain their ethnic national autonomy and their identity. The Hausa/Fulani of the North West loves an Islamic empire and have spinned innumerable riots and mayhem across the county, through the Maitatsine, Sharia, the Taliban, the Al-Queda to the Boko-Haram to drum it into our skull that they want their internal Islamic autonomy. The Middlebelt ethnic nationalities of Central Nigeria have resisted religious and cultural imposition and subjection since the 1950’s up till the recent Fulani invasion of Berom land. The Kanuri nation of Borno Kingdom in the North East wants to uphold their cultural and religious heritage by which they could be identified and respected. Has the 1999 Constitution granted all these? Eleven years of its operation has seen a huge harvest of discontent, disagreement and disintegration on a fast lane. Could anyone still say that we have gone beyond talks?
The reason for a National Conference is because Nigerians do not believe in the legitimacy of the National Assembly as elected, and from whom they withheld their mandate. In this case, what is needed is an All Ethnic Independent National Conference to resolve our constitutional incongruity, since the National Assembly and a Constituent Assembly may not co-exist! The purpose? To distil our differences into a collective and fundamental law known as the Constitution from which none shall have an excuse to dishonor. And to utilize our centripetal energy for the building of a true nation whose prosperity will be the business of all. The subsisting unitary constitution is a panel beater’s work and by the time amendments are made to it by the disabled law makers, what you have is an ugly rickety patchwork of no use to anyone; and by which no enduring prosperity or prosperous nation can ever be built!