By Onozure Dania

Professor Itse Sagay SAN, a foremost constitutional lawyer, in this interview spoke on the on going constitution amendment by the National Assembly, the Rivers crisis and the Chief Justice of Nigeria,  one year in office excerpts.

What exactly do you think is the problem with the present Nigerian constitution considering the on going amendments by the National Assembly?

I don’t want to discuss the constitution in bits and pieces because when you do that, we will lose the forest and will only be seeing the trees. So, we need to be careful. Let me start with a general statement before zeroing in on immunity clause and other things. I think the first point to me is that the National Assembly has completely derailed as far as this amendment is concerned.

Itse Sagay

And the derailment could possibly be because they are not even competent to revise the Nigerian constitution, which I think is meant for the national conference because they cannot see what needs to be done, We need to change it, to revise it and restore federalism into the constitution, the way it used to be in 1960 and 1963 constitutions. That is the major thing and because they have lost sight of that major picture, they now started picking here, picking there without a large framework within which they operate.

They are now moving in the opposite direction of federalism, moving away from federalism. In other words, if federalism is towards the right, the National Assembly is just trekking leftwards, moving away. For example, when you say you want autonomy for local governments, it means you want to destroy federalism. Because once a local government is autonomous, then it is independent of the state in which it exists and therefore has direct relationship with the federal government that is the end of the existence of states. That is the end of state autonomy itself and that is the end of the independence, authority and operation of states. What you have is a unitary system with local governments. Again, they even want INEC to conduct local government elections.

When they are talking like that, it means they are not thinking. They do not have goals and objectives into which you fit in individual thought. If they have the objective of true federalism, they will not be going in the direction of actually destroying it or as I have said earlier wiping out true federalism and that is exactly what the national assembly is doing.

Looking at the crisis in Rivers State, the First Lady admitted that her problem with the state governor, Rotimi Amaechi started four years ago, what is your take on this?

The first thing I will say is that the First Lady is not an elected person. She has no constitutional or legal office. So, she shouldn’t be interfering in Rivers state governance. It is not her business.

She said she interfered because Rivers is her home state. So, how many times have I gone to disturb the governor of Delta state because he does something in my state that I don’t like? The issue does not arise at all. She has no valid argument to back her claim and she should not abuse the position of the so-called First Lady or being the wife of the president. She is a private citizen as far as Rivers state is concerned. And let me tell you,. all these fighting is about 2015, because of the nagging feeling that Amaechi is interested in being vice presidential candidate to a Northerner.

That is the whole genesis of this problem and because of the intolerance which is a culture in this country, then it becomes an insult for anybody to dream of being president or vice-president when the master is also having the dream of being re-elected into the same office’. So, it is that culture of oppression that is behind all this. But the solution to all this is very simple. It is what we have already said. We have a unitary government that is why the effects of the federal government, the negative impact of the federal government can be so felt in Rivers State.

Why a police commissioner can turn himself into a politician, who speaks as he likes and creates crisis in the state just to please one master somewhere. If we have true federalism and each state has its own police, it won’t happen. So, this confirms the fact that there is need for true federalism and what pleases me is that the Northerners who have always opposed true federalism, who oppose state police, now their eyes are open.

They can now see clearly after the experience of four of them in Rivers State, they are now beginning to tell a different story and this is what we have been telling them. A state in a federation is an autonomous entity, entitled to self-determination, entitled to self-government, it is not supposed to be a sort of appendage to the federal government, it should be independent of the federal government with its own resources, with its own power, with its own authority.

It is not so in Nigeria today and I am happy that those Northerners who are always in favour of an overwhelming and overbearing federal government have seen the consequences. So the only thing is to restore true federalism and everybody will respect one another, so that the ugly incident of 1962 will not repeat itself.

What is your assessment of the Chief Justice of Nigeria’s one year in office so far?

It has been a very successful journey. She has rejuvenated the whole judicial system. She has given us hope and the corrupt and rotten ones are now very afraid. Impunity has been greatly reduced and we will encourage her, we will help her, we will cooperate with her and see that what she has started will be carried on to a successful completion.