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By adminadmin on October 31, 2015


The preamble to the 1999 Constitution 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….”
If, in legal terms, this Preamble does not, by itself, grant any powers and rights not specified in the Constitution, it cannot itself, being a statement of the principles in this Constitution, be based on a false premise. That such a premise as “We The People” is false implies that the entire principles, powers and rights it purports to embody are also false since “We, The People” had no hand in its making, directly or indirectly, as it was a product of military fiat which was not acting and did not act on behalf of “We, The People”, even as, by so doing, the producers of this Constitution unwittingly affirmed the Peoples’ sovereignty. This false preamble only means, on the one hand, not binding on “We, The People” on whose behalf such an assumption was made, and on the other, “We, The People” need to exercise our right to correct this anomaly by ensuring that the Constitution is indeed a product of “We, The People”, the only guarantee of its effectiveness.
As such authority was not delegated to the military, it also, at the same time, implies that, at any and all times, only “We, The People” have the power and the right to make, amend or change the Constitution, partially or in its entirety and such powers and rights cannot be circumscribed by whatever provisions contained therein once the “We, The People”, on our own initiative, decide to express ourselves and make any changes, to the extent of overriding whatever provisions that had been provided for any changes at any time, based on the exclusivity of the rights of “We, The People” to always have the ability and the need to make such decisions, partially or wholly, and at any point in time, thus voiding all the two-thirds of states and National Assembly provisions for its amendment.
Nigeria has witnessed the violation of this 1999 Constitution in various forms by different arms of government characterized by official impunity with no consequences, since products of the Constitution itself and the Laws derived therefrom, are not organic expression of the “We, The People’s” sociology, morality and ethics. The first line of obedience is on the morality and ethics of a Nation or People which, ab initio, influences individual and social behaviors before the application of the letters of the law. Thus, a Yoruba, for example, inherently knows certain unacceptable forms of private or public behavior, products of family and/or community upbringing, the violation of which not only imposes social and cultural sanctions but also now sanctioned by Constitutional legalisms. Thus, a “We, The People” based Constitution reinforces our cultural values as against the heavy pressure of negation from both our colonial past as well as our post-colonial present which is slowly turning us into human beings living outside the context of our God given existential reality.
This is all the more so when the same preamble defines Nigeria as an “indivisible and indissoluble sovereign nation under God”, thus ensuring the Constitution being consistent with what we know as God’s prescriptions for Nations; otherwise, the preamble would also fail the “God Test”, for if God’s Sovereignty is accepted as it is in this preamble, it follows that we must accept the cultural essence of humankind as created by God. The “works of man” as in the post-colonial state, remain just that and cannot be substituted and turned into “works of God”, for the work of God in “man” recognizes the cultural being upon which “man” is to reciprocate by recognizing God’s Sovereignty in his or her affairs. To be “under God” therefore means that all of us must exist in and exhibit our God-created essence and our having to live together, “under God” cannot be based on the negation of such essence, otherwise, such a negation already denies the Sovereignty of God who created them. To avoid this, live together and positively influence each other, for the good of each other, becomes a human political construct, which in our case, expresses itself as Federalism where the expectations and aspirations of “We, The People” become the fullest manifestation of God in us.
The negotiation of the Federalism that ushered in our Independence was substituted with a “Nigerian Personality” of no foundation in either Language or culture, and purportedly “under God” and had been unable to even address the social and economic issues of today’s age, which we are still battling with, today.
Everyone in Nigeria now laments the erosion of the developments achieved in the First Republic founded on the social and cultural aspirations of the Peoples, in whichever way they were expressed, where, for the Yoruba Nation, the Western Region’s education policy was premised on creating a work force capable of ensuring her economic development via industrialization of the Region allowing for competitiveness on the world stage because there is something in us(culturally) to be showcased to the world through our economic activities.
The beginnings of the University of Ife saw the Portuguese Language being the first Foreign Language course introduced based on the expected relationships that would be developed with the Yoruba Diaspora in Brazil which was expected to become the basis for an economic relationship between Brazil and the Western Region. Today, Brazil has not only left the entire country of Nigeria behind, but has gone ahead to become one of the BRICS Economy challenging the IMF/World Bank Status Quo. If the Federalism of the First Republic had not been politically and militarily truncated, it can comfortably be said that the Western Region would have been part of this global economic initiative.
This false premise was again recently manifested by the Emir of Kano who proposed, as a solution to Nigeria’s current economic distress, the abolition of fuel subsidy as well as the naira being made to find its level. Without addressing the over-bloated political structure responsible for about 70% of recurrent expenditure as well as the near unanimity of all activities in all the states, as products of this false premise embodying the 1999 Constitution which ensured that everything in the center is replicated in all the states, the Emir simply suggested the same solutions Nigeria had been experimenting with for the past 30 years; focusing specifically on the Naira finding its level when we all know that such has not happened since its introduction about 30years ago but it is actually steadily going down, as if going down to sheol is actually its level. We also all know that in spite of the Special Intervention Vehicles like SURE-P or PTF designed to manage “savings” from subsidy removal, the economy did not progress from its extractive dependency into the productive, which ultimately makes nonsense of the removal. Hence, from every angle of our political, economic and spiritual existence Nigeria has become stuck, based on this simple false premise and which has to be addressed for any progress to be made but which was not addressed by the Emir.
At this point, the question is whether our elected officials can, with all conscience, turn round and overturn what they have sworn to uphold and govern with. Constitutional existence of citizens is derived from the delegated authority of “We, The People” via any direct or indirect method, be it a plebiscite, referendum or simple votes on its provisions. Whichever way it is done, the imprimatur of “We, The People” must be obvious. Thus, for those sworn on the basis of its provisions, it must follow that the restoration of the power of “We, The People” and its true reflection becomes their only conscionable activity.
“We, The People” should therefore be able to engage these officials by formally presenting our own aspirations, in whatever form and legitimized through Referendums or Plebiscites among the Peoples of Nigeria, to usher in, among others, a drastic reduction in the recurrent expenditure flowing largely from an over-bloated political structure, via the necessary political restructuring embracing the already canvassed Parliamentary system with full or part time features, ability of the Peoples to administer their resources to the best of their ability with its multiplier effects on other aspects of social and economic existence. The challenge is therefore how those elected officials will be made to pursue this responsibility, and in a responsible manner as a matter of necessity, under God.