Is changing the constitution now a priority?

That’s the question on the lips of many compatriots when they watched a group of statesmen under the umbrella of the Patriots visiting President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in the State House Abuja. The visit on the penultimate Friday was made in the heat of the #EndBadGovernanceInNigeria protest where they made a pitch to the president […]

That’s the question on the lips of many compatriots when they watched a group of statesmen under the umbrella of the Patriots visiting President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in the State House Abuja. The visit on the penultimate Friday was made in the heat of the #EndBadGovernanceInNigeria protest where they made a pitch to the president to convene a national conference to produce a people’s democratic conference for the country.

The leader of the Patriots, Emeka Anyaoku, former Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, asserted that: ‘these challenges that we are currently facing are symptoms of the inappropriateness of the constitution that we have at present, the inappropriateness of the governance system we have at present. And I’m sure that when a national constituent assembly looks at all these and looks at all the recommendations of the past national conferences and produces a draft constitution, the country will be better.’

Readers might recall that the Patriots was formed in the early 1980s from an amorphous group that came under the leadership of Rotimi Williams, the famous Nigerian lawyer, and the first name on the Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SAN) list. Another famous member of the group was Professor Ben Nwabueze, also an early SAN who would succeed the leadership after William’s demise.

The two were prominent in General Murtala Mohammed’s Constitution Drafting Committee of 1975, which heralded the 2nd Republic and gave birth to the present constitution with some modifications in 1999.

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Inexplicably, a few years after the fruits of their labour started bearing fruits, Williams and Nwabueze turned full circle in the 1980s to reject the centre-piece of their work: a federation of states with a strong centre. They, then, began to advocate returning to the rejected parliamentary system of powerful regional governments with a weak centre. It looked incredulous to many of us. Their unkind critics even allude to the fact that the Patriots, as they were constituted, had realised that the North with a higher population would always prevail in capturing the centre in any free and fair election.

The Patriots made that a clarion call of the need to generate a new constitution despite the many provisions in the existing constitution which could be utilised to make adjustments whenever the need arose. They have been at it for many years. Sometimes they are ignored, but at least in one instance, they got their best listening ear during President Goodluck Jonathan’s time. Nothing came out of that effort.

The Patriots are now back again singing a familiar refrain. Unfortunately, their timing undid their effort. In not so many words President Bola Tinubu told them that there were more important matters before him. You may recall that it was a time when the government was contending with wholesale street riots in major centres in the North arising from the high cost of living. Most parts of the country had been sitting at home for over a week and yet the Patriots were only after advancing the cause of their pet project of producing another constitution for the country.

I am not surprised that the president waved them aside by saying, ‘I am currently preoccupied with economic reform. That is my first priority. Once this is in place, as soon as possible, I will look at other options, including constitutional review as recommended by you and other options.’ Since then, other compatriots have assailed the Patriots to no end.

An elder statesman, Tanko Yakasai, was the first to issue the first salvo disagreeing with the group over the solutions to the nation’s problems they proposed to the president. In his view, ‘the core problem facing Nigeria is not necessarily the constitution or the tenure of office. The crux of our challenges lies in the attitude and character of those who operate the constitution. Without a change in the mindset and conduct of our leaders, even the most perfectly crafted constitution will fail to deliver the progress and stability we seek.’

Professor Auwalu Yadudu, my Kongo campus colleague, now a renowned constitutional lawyer agreed substantially with Tanko Yakasai that Nigeria’s problem is not about the nature of its constitution but the operators who implement it. In a report published in this paper Yadudu further argued that for any changes to be legitimate, they must be made within the existing legal and constitutional framework. Any other approach, he suggested, would be suspect and contrary to the ground norm, making it illegitimate.

I agree with them all. From my perspective, the constitution we are using is yet to be truly tested. Various efforts have been going on in the National Assembly to fine-tune it with some successes, here and there. The executive and the judiciary have also been working in tandem in this regard. Recently via this legitimate route, the Supreme Court has ruled that local governments will now receive allocations directly to their coffers thus saving them from the grip of state governors. Why then would we need a fresh Constituent Assembly to fashion a new constitution when we already have one in place?

The whole venture would divert attention from the grim matters facing the nation now. The president is right to snub them. The Patriots should be advised to find some other cause to pursue.