Constitution review: Will Nigeria get it right now?

David Mark, Senate President The issue of constitution review has been sticking out like a sore thumb since the inception of the current democratic dispensation. As the National Assembly firms up for another shot at it, Stephen Gbadamosi writes that emerging signals from the legislature do not suggest the capability of the current Assembly to lay the issue to rest.

When former President Olusegun Obasanjo organised the National Political Reform Conference (NPRC) during his second term of office, the idea was greeted with mixed reactions. Many analysts who saw the move to review Nigeria’s constitution as long overdue were happy that some burning issues that had threatened to tear the country into shreds would be addressed. Prior to the Obasanjo-led democratic government in 1999, there had been agitations over vexed constitutional issues such as the electoral system, true federalism, revenue sharing formula, state creation and a whole lot of other issues. Thus, those who saw the NPRC as a welcome development could not be faulted.

But certain Nigerians saw through the ‘democrat’ veil of the former president. They had argued that given the military antecedent of Obasanjo and the fact that the 1999 Constitution, the body of law under which the country had been administered since then, was a product of military government, Nigeria could not have a ‘peoples’ constitution’ under the former military head of state.

As preparations for the NPRC advanced, dissenting voices also grew. Civil society organisations particularly felt they were not being carried along in the process. Thus came the Pro-National Conference Organisations (PRONACO) under the leadership of elder statesman, Pa Anthony Enahoro; Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, and others. It organised a parallel national conference alongside the government’s. While the Federal Government’s conference held in Abuja, PRONACO’s was organised at Magodo, Lagos State.

But laudable as PRONACO’s moves were, political pundits said the events that played out at its sessions underlined why it would take time for Nigeria to evolve a constitution that would be all-encompassing. Despite the quality of its leadership, PRONACO’s conference was marred by bickering, intrigues, political shenanigans and parochial interests. Its draft ‘people’s constitution’ has since been generating controversy. Supposedly, the NPRC was bugged by the so-called Nigerian factor. Those who had taken Obasanjo’s seemingly pragmatic move with a pinch of salt were later to be vindicated. Pundits said the former president had an ulterior motive.

Nigerians later realised that the crux of the NPRC was to hand the Obasanjo-led government an unconstitutional and unpopular third term on a silver platter. Furthermore, it was so sad that while the National Assembly then paraded men of high political ilk, it was the same ‘quality leaders’ that acted as Obasanjo’s foot soldiers in the legislature in the doomed bid for tenure elongation. In the end, the laudable move to review the constitution was wholly jettisoned because of the clause seeking to hand Obasanjo and his government a third term opportunity. The attempt by Obasanjo and his supporters to have a tenure elongation has become a sore point in the political history of Nigeria to be rued by many who had sacrificed to enthrone democracy in the country.

Not withstanding the tragic failure of attempt at reviewing the 1999 Constitution, indications were still rife that Nigeria could not afford to fold arms on issue of constitution amendment. The issue came up recently when the leadership braced up again to review the constitution with a vow by the Senate President, Senator David Mark, to address some of the contentious issues therein. Thus, in the 2008 Appropriation Bill recently signed into law by President Umaru Yar’Adua, the National Assembly made preparations towards this. On Wednesday, April 17, the upper chamber of the Assembly moved a motion to have a 74-man joint Senate and House of Representatives committee constituted to collect inputs from the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja. The motion was duly passed.

Senate Leader, Senator Teslim Folarin, who moved the motion for fresh constitution amendment, said the new attempt would address the agitations by cross section of Nigerians about the loopholes in the 1999 Constitution and their negative effects on the polity. “The grievous hardship, discrimination, inequality and rancour within the Nigerian polity have been attributed to the inherent discrepancies, anomalies, loopholes and lacunae in the 1999 Constitution. We are also worried that the continued delay in the review and amendment of the constitution, contrary to the yearnings and agitation of Nigerians, is capable of undermining the democratic progress in the country.

“The Senate should be conscious of the fact that Section 9 of the constitution confers on the National Assembly, the powers to initiate constitution amendment. Equally, we should be aware that the fourth and fifth National Assemblies embarked on the patriotic duty of reviewing and amending the 1999 Constitution but could not conclude the exercise due to political reasons,” Folarin said.

However, the widely accepted motion, according to bookmakers, recorded its first minus when the proposed committee was said to be expected to limit itself to “non-controversial items for amendment.” Many Nigerians thought that those so-called controversial areas were the actual parts of the constitution that touch on the nerves of suffering Nigerians. Their argument was that the failure of the NPRC started with the ‘no-go-area’ mandate of former President Obasanjo, culminating in the realisation that the Nigerian government was not yet ready to take the bull by the horns on the issue of co-habitation of the diverse ethnic nationalities of the country.

Now, the constitution review matter has been reported to be causing ripples in the National Assembly. Nigerian Tribune recently learned that the decision by the Senate to allow senators to determine one of them from each state to represent their respective states is at the bottom of the agitation. Each state has three senators in the upper chamber. The three senators from each of the states, according to the Senate leadership, would meet to determine which of them would represent their states. As the matter continued to rouse agitation, the Senate leadership gave a directive that ranking of senators, whereby old senators were advised to be considered to represent their counterparts from the state, should be used in determining the state representatives. But the decision is said to have deepened the disaffection, with some members alleging marginalisation and breach of federal character.

However, majority of Nigerians are now wondering why a decision that highlights representative democracy should be causing disaffection among senators who were elected from their constituencies based on the same tenet of democracy. As an analyst put it, it was the beginning of the self-interest problem that put paid to the NPRC attempt at reviewing the constitution. “If you look at it critically, the senators’ disagreement over who to represent each state on the committee smacks of the witnessed parochial thoughts that scuttled the attempt at reviewing the constitution during former President Obasanjo’s tenure.

“I think that much as the common man desires restructure through constitution amendment, the country is not yet ripe or one should say that the players are not yet matured to handle pragmatic and altruistic constitution reappraisal process,” a commentator who craved anonymity said. The analyst’s fear cannot be said to be unfounded. With reports that some of the senators are now resorting to intervention of political godfathers in their states in the choice of who represents the state on the committee, there are genuine fears that such a committee would work in tandem with the parochial interest of a few stakeholders.

Though the House of Representatives has expressed its readiness to join the Senate in the onerous task, it is not yet known how the lower chamber will handle the question of representation on the joint committee. Many Nigerians are hoping that members of the lower chamber would allow decorum to guide them in selecting those who would represent each constituency on the committee. But if the Senate, with its array of notable Nigerians could be swayed over the constitution amendment saga, analysts wonder what could be expected from their counterparts in the lower legislature. The question now is: How prepared is the National Assembly to gather its acts together and give Nigerians a workable constitution? The answer, obviously, lies in the belly of time.