The saga of our unamendable constitution
Oh, if we had found a benevolent dictator in Obasanjo, things would have been different. But the leopard never changes its spots. Under Obj’s watch, we had a unique opportunity to amend the constitution and we began the process, given altruism, we would have had the first major amendment, but then Obasanjo encountered Yoweri Museveni […]
Oh, if we had found a benevolent dictator in Obasanjo, things would have been different. But the leopard never changes its spots. Under Obj’s watch, we had a unique opportunity to amend the constitution and we began the process, given altruism, we would have had the first major amendment, but then Obasanjo encountered Yoweri Museveni and began to nurture the illusion of being a president in perpetuity. With divine providence, his dream was scuttled and out flew the amendments – the baby together with the bathwater. In a country that thrives on financial impropriety, nobody bothered about the billions of spent Naira down the drain. The money that Mantu and his cohorts spent on that futile exercise is money down the drain.
It became clear from then that the 1999 Constitution would never be amended. The people we parade as our representatives are no better in most cases than pirates who would rather waste it if they won’t benefit from it. And so, it was no surprise when the Ekweremadu/Nafada group started on an aggrandizing fight for superiority rather than focus on what would benefit the nation. For these people, the nation is their ego. But having budgeted for the amendment, they would never give up the money. To hell with the process.
When, a few weeks back, snippets of the so-called Senate amendment began to filter through the news media, meaningful observers could only snigger and ask – to what end? Going solo with the amendment is nothing but a charade. At best, the two committees working together do not make an amendment until any proposition makes the round of the 36 state assemblies and the endorsement of 21 of them. While the political logjam occasioned by Yar’Adua’s illness lasted, it could have been imaginable that the greedy governors would back anything to keep the army away. These set of doctors seek no cure, they barely want the patient alive to keep coming for consultation. The moment David Mark and his group conferred on Goodluck Jonathan his desire, the scavenging governors withdrew to their shell of intrigues and all hopes of supporting clausal amendment went with them.
How do you get a lootocrat governor raking out cash to either consolidate his hold on power or to install a stooge to support a national cause, especially in an election year, when every politician is preoccupied with politicking? For the PDP parliamentarians, the pre-occupation is automatic return ticket which succinctly means endorsement of being rigged in by hook or crook in a country where votes do not count. Where people do not return based on track record or potential but loyalty to causes that are completely anti-people. You can read their minds by the things they endorsed – legitimized carpet crossing, the worst form of unconscionable political prostitution. Carpet crossers have no conscience and no affiliation to any ideal personal or national, they are shallow water fishes who swim with the tide.
Independent candidacy would help them buy votes without control or loyalty. Only graduates would now qualify to seek parliamentary positions. Pray, since when do sexually transmitted degrees make embryos of empty shells? This would only increase the number of Toronto certificates and the number of certificated fools occupying parliamentary seats. The quality of debate would still be shallow, ministerial screenings would still be characterized by kitchen questions and the bow and go cultist syndrome by which would be ministers agree to share their loot once settled in office.
Already, we have the laziest set of legislators in the tenured history of the National Assembly, who in two years, have passed two or three budgets and less than five laws. It takes more than Oluwole certificates to change that. If these people are accountable to the people, if they knew that their return to the chambers is wholly dependent on track record or public perception of their performance, they would sit up. They will take constitutional amendment more seriously, but not these. And so, this so-called piecemeal amendment will stay until their illicit terms expire, the report would be dumped and another set of conmen would set up on another jamboree with tax-payers money and it would continue ad nauseam while the people suffer. Shame!