Nwabueze to draft constitution alone

He asked President Goodluck Jonathan to convert a small committee that is already meeting in his house into a Presidential Committee to draft a constitution.He similarly asked Jonathan to insert a clause into the proposed National Conference’s enabling law for his draft constitution to be laid before it and to “form the basis of its […]

He asked President Goodluck Jonathan to convert a small committee that is already meeting in his house into a Presidential Committee to draft a constitution.
He similarly asked Jonathan to insert a clause into the proposed National Conference’s enabling law for his draft constitution to be laid before it and to “form the basis of its deliberations and decisions and to be piloted through the conference by the members of [Nwabueze’s] committee, just as was done in 1977/78 in the making of the 1979 Constitution.”
The demands were contained in Prof Nwabueze’s latest letter titled ‘Nature and Character of the Proposed National Conference: Its Primal Purpose and Modus Operandi.’
In it, he recalled the process adopted by the Obasanjo military regime in the 1970s to fashion out the 1979 Constitution. He recalled that a 49-member Constitution Drafting Committee [CDC] chaired by Chief Rotimi Williams drafted a constitution in 1975-76 which was then tabled before the 1977-78 Constituent Assembly. He recalled also that Williams and CDC’s six sub-committee chairmen, including himself, piloted the draft through the Constituent Assembly.
He then said, “Unless the National Conference, when it convenes, has before it a Draft New Constitution, to be piloted by people well acquainted with its provisions…the conference may lose focus and degenerate into a talk shop.”
He said he therefore formed “a team of prominent lawyers, political scientists and other experts with specialist knowledge to work with me to draft a suitable Draft New Constitution”. He did this after the Uyo National Political Summit convened earlier this year by The Patriots and its allies.
He said, “My committee will commence sitting on Tuesday November 19, 2013 and work through the week from 11am with a break for lunch. The venue of its meetings is my residence at Ajao Estate, Isolo, Lagos.” He said in preparing this new constitution, he will refer to drafts earlier made by Pronaco and The Patriots.
Nwabueze however said, “But there is a snag arising from the fact that my committee has no official status. President Goodluck Jonathan may wish to consider giving recognition to the Committee by constituting it an official [i.e. Presidential] Committee and by inserting in the National Conference and Referendum Bill a provision authorising the Draft New Constitution prepared by the Committee to be laid before the Conference and form the basis of its deliberations and to be piloted before the Conference by the members of the Committee just as was done in 1977/78 in the making of the 1979 Constitution.”
It would be recalled that President Jonathan announced in his October 1 national broadcast that he was convening a national conference two weeks after Prof Nwabueze led a delegation to the State House to advocate for it. Subsequently, Nwabueze was appointed a member of the National Dialogue Advisory Committee chaired by Senator Femi Okurounmu but he declined to be a member, saying he was too old and was receiving medical treatment in London.