North plots against constitutional amendment

Taiwo Adisa, Abuja - 30.05.2008

The Northern political class has mapped out plans to scuttle the constitutional amendments by the National Assembly, sources in Abuja have revealed. It was gathered during the week that the North, which felt uncomfortable with the amendments, initially had come up with the kite on tenure elongation as a way of testing the waters on whether the amendments would succeed or not.

Sources told the Nigerian Tribune that the kite that was flown by the former governor of Jigawa State, Senator Saminu Turaki, had the backing of many powerful forces in the North.

The plan, according to sources, was to play from two fronts. It was planned that the constitutional amendment plan would die a natural death if it could be immediately tagged a tenure elongation bid, just after the failed third term project of former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

Besides, the Plan B from the power caucus was said to be the actualisation of the tenure elongation bid itself if the press would not help in killing the amendment bid through the reactions to the tenure elongation kite.

“The plan is that the press will either shoot down the constitutional amendment project immediately when the tenure elongation bid was mentioned and if that failed, the North would go for the tenure elongation and plans to use all means democratically to get it,” a source said.

The source further said that the North was uncomfortable that the South was planning to use the constitutional amendments to get some states created while the South-South would also resurrect the resource control agitation.

“It is clear that our leaders (in the North) are truly not happy that the constitution thing is becoming a state creation exercise and that could open the flanks to many things. The North has to defend its interests and that is why the tenure thing was brought to the fore,” another source said.