[size=16pt]CONSTITUTION: The lie called Nigeria[/size]

By Jide Ajani


When will the folly stop?  No one can say. Even President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan who just some two years ago became a victim of this paradigm, mocked and made to feel incompetent and incompatible by the Yar’Adua cabal – because they didn’t believe in the constitution of Nigeria – is set on his path to another paradigm which would not lead to any shift.

Yet, it is common sense that one of the silliest things is when a man knows he’s lying, yet convinces himself to believe that he’s not.  The leaders of Nigeria represent this typology.  There is a difference between telling it as it is and telling it as you want it to be.

The latter comes with confetti of challenges because telling it as you want it to be exposes you to all manner of implications because you are not telling it as it is.

The 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria deceitfully says:

“We the people of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, having firmly and solemnly resolve, to live in unity and harmony as one indivisible and indissoluble sovereign nation under God, dedicated to the promotion of inter-African solidarity, world peace, international co-operation and understanding;

And to provide for a Constitution for the purpose of promoting the good government and welfare of all persons in our country, on the principles of freedom, equality and justice, and for the purpose of consolidating the unity of our people

Do hereby make, enact and give to ourselves the following Constitution”.

Since we as a people prefer copying to being original in our deeds, let us help the leadership of the Nigerian state thus.

Just 59 men with good, very good, intentions wrote the American declaration of independence with a clear head.  Just like Nigeria’s founding fathers just before independence agreeing on the institution of true federalism, the Americans wrote the following while capturing the mood of the paradigm shift they wanted to engage:

“When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. –Such has been the patient sufferance of….”

And then for the constitution, they wrote:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America”.

When Obasanjo, yes, Matthew Okikiolakan Aremu Olusegun Obasanjo, instituted a Constituent Assembly which came up with the executive presidential system of government, the egg heads and the few politicians among them expected the operators to be driven by altruistic intentions in applying the letters and spirit of the constitution. But to lie barefacedly that “We the people of the Federal Republic of Nigeria,

Having firmly and solemnly resolve, to live in unity and harmony as one indivisible and indissoluble sovereign nation…” as a preamble to such a document only means one thing:  That other further lies would follow.

Therefore, when some people talk about the need for a sovereign national conference, national dialogue, constitutional conference, national summit and some others are whimsically rejecting such calls, it is all a continuation of living the lie that Nigeria has become.

Amalgamated by the soldier of fortune, Lord Lugard, the north and south of this land were forced to cohabitate together without any form of consensus and the “mistakes of 1914 are coming to light”, according to late Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto.

The mistakes come in the form of Boko Haram, Niger Delta militancy, Oodua Peoples Congress, OPC insurgency, Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra, MASSOB, and all other forms of ethnic groupings seeking to ventilate within this shambolic Nigerian state.

The very elementary stage of psychiatry, we are told, is the expectation of a different outcome from doing the same thing over and over again.  Since Nigeria shifted from a true federal system, with the three (and later four) regions as components, to the unwieldy and unproductive 36 state structure, it has been a progressive retrogression.

Yet, President Jonathan is fallen to the same trap of self deception – not willing to do that which is in the interest of Nigerians – engendering a process that would lead to a truly peoples constitution that would not hurt.  Instead a certain Belgore Committee, with a mandate that is similar to that of a management meeting of a distressed bank is expected to come up with solutions for Nigeria’s 150 million people.

http://www.vanguardngr.com/2012/02/controversy-over-new-constitution-the-lie-called-nigeria/

The saddest thing about Nigeria is that grown men come out in the open to claim that Nigeria's constitution is modeled after the US one.

Let me just say that if the US is a masterpiece of a particular tapestry or painting, Nigeria is a caricature of the same work. 

Na big lie o!
And e sweet weh weh!!!
Stay in the East.
You don't need to live in the North. . .OR ANY WHERE ELSE.
Gerrof NL also.

I hate One Nigeria, but I would rather have it stay as it is before the CANCER spreads to other bones!!!

Onlytruth:


Yet, it is common sense that one of the silliest things is when a man knows he’s lying, yet convinces himself to believe that he’s not.  The leaders of Nigeria represent this typology.  There is a difference between telling it as it is and telling it as you want it to be.

 This is splendidly put. The writer captures the mindset of a typical one-nigerianist- leaders and followers alike. YES I say followers (the ruled), because even here on nairaland and other nigerian fora, I have seen dumb and brain-dead nigerians who still believe nigeria can be great by thinking that somehow their lies will become truth,,,,but at whose expense? At the expense(s) of children/generation unborn .
ndu_chuks (the hausa/fulani goat is a perfect example of one of the ruled who have championed these lies). I suspect his parents are part of the ruling elites of the north, hence his stand on one-nigeria either by hook or by crook.

The dungeon called nigeria shall never bear anything good until it disintegrates by ANY MEANS NECESSARY . Nigeria shall everly be like the "barren" fig tree that is eternally doomed.

Like the second coming of una MO and Christ!!!
Keep waiting.

Holy Ghost go don born many children for Nigeria before Nigeria go break up.
The CABAL are busy chopping money, the hungry ones are busy calling for Nigeria to break up.

Poor man go dey holla ' awun a ram o'!!!
Rich man go dey holla 'mo du pe'!!!

God bless African China the Prophetic Singer.