23 Jan 2009 |
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| The Constitution and a divided National Assembly By Reuben Abati THE exchange of recriminations between members of the National Assembly's Joint Committee on the Review of the 1999 Constitution, with members of the House of Representatives walking angrily out of the retreat of the JCCR recently in Minna points to only one sordid realization: the lack of political will on the part of the ruling political elite to address any of the questions that have been raised about the illegitimacy and the many shortcomings of the 1999 Constitution. Constitutions in themselves do not make societies, but they help to set the ground rules for the union. They serve as basic documents to remind all and sundry of duties and obligations. A constitution defines relations and the modes of governance. There have been complaints that Nigeria's 1999 Constitution empowers a few, to the disadvantage of the majority. The major challenge is in giving full effect to a people's Constitution as the fundamental law of the land. Constitution making, constitutional reform and enforcing Constitutionalism in Nigeria have always been rather testy subjects since the days of the Clifford Constitution of 1922. In 1999, with the return to civilian rule, there had emerged a consensus that the extant Constitution is defective, and a true people's Constitution needed to be produced, or that at best, the 1999 Constitution should be amended in many parts. This Constitution was given to Nigerians by the military government led by General Abdusalami Abubakar, through Decree 24 of 1999, in the same manner in which preceding military administrations had given Nigerians, the 1979, 1989, and 1994 Constitutions. These constitutions, like others in Nigerian history were handed down to the people, either by the elite or the soldiers, and as such no Constitution in Nigeria had actually been a reflection of the true wishes and aspirations of the people. The operative phrase: "We the people" in the Preamble to the Constitution has been a lie. The return to democracy in 1999 was in part meant to provide the people an opportunity to take charge of their own lives and define the rules of engagement in Nigeria. But members of the JCCR lack this sense of history. They are fighting like over-pampered children over protocol, status and order of seniority. The Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives insists that he must be a co-Chairman of the JCCR. He enjoys the support of his colleagues in the House. The Senators in the Committee argue that there can only be one Chairman, and that since the Deputy Speaker of the House has been functioning happily as a deputy Chairman, why is he now getting ambitious and asking to be a co-Chair, a word which the Senators tell us is unknown to the English dictionary! So much energy has been spent in the last week on name-calling. The Reps are accusing the Senators of greed. And the Senators held a special meeting at the end of which they declared that there are ambitious fifth columnists in the House of Representatives. The Senators are planning to go ahead with a unilateral review of the 1999 Constitution. The Reps want to set up their own Constitution Review Committee. This is the quality of parliamentary dialogue in Nigeria today. What is wrong? The simple truth is that since 1999, the review of the 1999 Constitution has become a big business opportunity, a racket as it were. Each time a committee is set up to review the Constitution, a secretariat has to be set up. Cheques will be signed for the purchase of stationery. There could even be overseas trips to study how the Constitution works in other countries. Researchers and consultants will be recruited, the committee will travel up and down and across Nigeria under the pretext that it is consulting the people. Such a big opportunity to earn sitting and travel allowances is bound to result in a clash of egos, a serious jostling for control and name-calling. But it is sad that members of the National Assembly, and of the Joint Committee on Constitution Review are unable to rise above their egos, to act in the people's interest. The assignment that has been given the JCCR requires statesmanship. The conduct of the members is despicable. Their lack of capacity for dialogue and negotiations and the resort to name-calling short-changes the Nigerian people. It will be a useful exercise at some point to calculate the amount of money that has been spent on this process in the last nine years. Nigeria is still in the dark. More money, more time is about to be expended and there may be no light at the end of the tunnel. In 1999, the Obasanjo government had set up a Presidential Committee on the Review of the 1999 Constitution. That committee spent two years studying the Constitution, collecting memoranda. When its report was ready, it travelled round the six-geo-political zones to present a so-called Volumes One and Two. Nothing came out of that exercise. In 2001, the National Assembly further set up a Joint Committee, like the present one to look into the 1999 Constitution. Again, nothing was achieved. In 2005, the Obasanjo government set up the National Political Reforms Conference. So much money was again spent by delegates and researchers, trying to identify all the loopholes in the 1999 Constitution, in order to activate a process of Constitutional Review. That process was aborted when it was reduced to tenure elongation and the politics of derivation. At the time, the National Assembly had also set up a Joint Committee of members of the two Houses. All the parties involved found an excuse to scuttle the process. In 2008, the National Assembly, class of 2007, is about to travel the same route, and their Distinguished Senators and Honourables have started again. Nigerians are ever so patient, because they are ever so forgetful. Admittedly, discussions of the Constitution often throw up primordial sentiments, and the unending feud over power and control among Nigerians. But the opportunity for mischief and racketeering would seem to have characterised the Constitution Reform project since 1999. Shunting aside the protests of the members of the Lower House as the work of fifth columnists, the Senate Committee on the Review of the Constitution has now said that it intends to travel round the country and invite memoranda! Would that be done at no cost to the Nigerian taxpayer? We have had enough travels, local and foreign, on this matter of Constitution Review. There is nothing the National Assembly needs to know that has not already been provided in previous reports and memoranda on the subject. In 1999, civil society organisations even organised their own Constitution Review process, and there was much enlightenment on the subject. Draft Constitutions were prepared by many groups, there was even a feminist version of the Nigerian Constitution suggesting that the masculine nature of the 1999 Constitution should be addressed. Other stakeholders even produced versions of the 1999 Constitution in indigenous languages. The National Assembly has been talking about Constitutional reform since August 2007. It only needs to study existing memoranda. Public debates, the rulings of the Election Petition Tribunals and the courts in the last eight years have all indicated areas of urgent amendment in the 1999 Constitution. The issues are so many, over 117 at the last count, all projecting the need to cleanse the 1999 Constitution of its contradictions and come up with a new Constitution that promotes justice, equity and federalism, or far-reaching amendments that transform the country's Basic Law. What is required is the political will to embark on the process of Constitutional Reform. The mode of altering provisions of the Constitution is properly spelled out in Section 9 of the 1999 Constitution. The current disagreement among members of the Joint Committee on Constitution Review is a perfect indication that those who are favoured by the limitations of the 1999 Constitution are the real fifth columnists. They are the ones protecting the status quo. The rest of the country pays the price for this through the resort to self-help among ordinary people and the abuse of privilege among the ruling elite and the reign of violence in the land. Voices of reason in society, and in the National Assembly should persuade the members of the JCCR to put Nigeria first.
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