Alani Akinrinade Demands Sovereign National Conference

Lord Malcolm Hailey, a British historian recorded Nigeria’s short-coming in these essentials when he said of his own peers’ creation: "Nigeria is perhaps the most artificial of the many administrative units created in the course of European occupation of Africa". Henry Bretton, an American political scientist wrote in the same vein: "there is no universally acceptable and understood rationale for the existence and functioning of a state called Nigeria and efforts at an artificial creation of a national mythology or a Nigerian ideology will be unproductive."

Unfortunately, we cannot even attempt an answer to that question here; why, because it is sub-judice as a few fellow Nigerians whose historical lessons at school as to how Nigeria came about, are already asking it at the Federal High Court in Abuja and Lagos. The plaintiffs include: Prince Tanimose Bankole Oki (SAN); Chief Anthony Enahoro; Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu; Professor Wole Soyinka and Biship Bolanle Gbonigi. The Late Chief C. C. Onoh was on that list up to his passage. From the younger generation, we also have plaintiffs including Ralph Uwazurike, Alhaji Shettima Yerima and Mujahedat Dokubo Asari. There is a legion of other prospective plaintiffs applying to join.

The last use to which the discarding of our ethnicities and the stealing of our sovereignties were put, manifests in the 1999 Constitution in the following realities:

1. A structural setting in which one Region pre-1966, has become 19 States plus the Abuja Federal Capital Territory and three Regions plus the erstwhile Federal Capital Territory of Lagos of the same period, have been collapsed into 17 States with the implications for representation at the National Assembly and revenue allocation.

2. A federal/states power relation equation in which the states (the supposed federating units) have become beggars at the feet of an almighty, omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent federal government with the states having minimal legislative power or resources to address the needs of their peoples. The tail ("federal" – Centre) now wags the body ("federating units" – States). Even where the States exercise legislative power, they have no enforcement machinery of their own since the centre ‘police’ the whole of the federation.

3. An expensive Presidential system has replaced the relatively cheaper Parliamentary system in which the executive branch were fully accountable to their peers in the legislature.

4. A unitary system of Government in which the Centre noses into all the nooks and crannies of the land-mass, sniffing out revenue producing resources to be hijacked, appropriated and shared under a skewed Revenue Sharing Formula, with almost no reference to derivation, the very antithesis of justice and fair play; a departure from the federal system under which the then federating Regions developed at their own pace using mostly their own resources between 1953 and 1966.

5. A Land Tenure System that deprives indigenes of their natural right to their lands but vests access to land in the hands of stranger elements.
 
6. Appropriation provisions that practically hand over blank cheques to the President and the 36 Governors who are at liberty to spend from the treasury while appropriation debates are still going on in the legislatures.

7. An immunity clause that effectively puts beyond our reach for query and sanction, the 37 men and their deputies whose signatures move all the monies contained in our treasury and who exercise full control over our commonwealth. Corruption remains hale and hearty, dwelling in the impregnable fortress of the Immunity Clause.

8. An electoral system in which the Centre and the party in power at the Centre have absolute control over the entire electioneering machinery throughout the country.

In all, over-centralisation, product of the 1999 Constitution, is at the heart of the inefficiencies and corruption that has brought Nigeria to where it is today.

Meanwhile, here are some of the problems in the 1999 constitution as highlighted by the CHANGE group.

Yes, he is.

"Sovereign National Conference" sounds too cryptic and nebulous to be meaningful.

To have a sovereign conference, we need leaders that represent the people.
 Do we have such leaders left now that Gani has passed? My take will be that the people of that generation should nolonger represent their people. We need people like the younger Lawyer that worked with Gani and other fresh faces. How can people who have enriched themselves within a corrupt system have a moral standing to attempt a new beginning? This will indeed be a farce.