BY HENRY UMORU

FOUNDER of the Nigerian Advance Party, NAP and a delegate at the on- going National Conference, Dr. Tunji Braithwaite, has canvassed for a Confederal Constitution to replace the 1999 Constitution

Dr. Tunji Braithwaite

Braithwaite, who is at the conference as an elder statesman, spoke on Monday, on the floor of the Conference.

The former Presidential Candidate who described the 1999 Constitution as Decree 24 which was presently destroying Nigeria and Nigerians, stressed that it should be thrown out and be replaced with either a Confederal constitution, with Nigeria operating con-federalism or a very loose federation.

Also, Braithwaite disagreed with President Goodluck Jonathan on 100 years celebration, saying that the President got it wrong as Nigeria was only 54 years old, adding that Nigeria was still work in progress.

He said: “Let the word go forth that there are a number of brave, honest nationalistic persons in this Conference that, hopefully would be able to reconstruct Nigeria in a way that the blessings, peace and prosperity rightly deserved by the peoples of this country would be guaranteed by a New Confederal Constitution.

Development conference

”The existing six geopolitical zones are uniquely different developmental problems for which a single ‘’one-size-fits-all ‘solution can never work in the reality of Nigeria’s diversity. The present 1999 Constitution or Decree 24 is enforcing a country that is destroying its own people, and should be rejected outright.

”This Conference  must therefore be as much a development conference as a constitutional one. It is our firm conviction that only a Confederal Constitution or a very loose federation is best suited for Nigeria. I say this because I know that no part of Nigeria is desert.”

Braithwaite, a Second Republic politician and a doctorate degree holder in Law, said he is speaking from experience because he has been part of the “Project Nigeria” journey.

“Before I make my few remarks which may be very strong, but certainly relevant to the purpose of this 2014 National Conference, let me say that I
align myself with many delegates in their commendation of President Jonathan’s inaugural address to this conference.

But my position in all this is that, Dr. Jonathan is acting a “Divine Script”, and to that extent, it is God Himself who has intervened at this point in time, in the affairs of the artificially created geographical territory called Nigeria.

”Let us briefly consider the record and antecedent of Dr. Jonathan: here is a man who became Governor of Bayelsa State by default.

Few years thereafter, he was yet again, by default, catapulted to the pinnacle of the Government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as president. A man, who is now in the saddle at the 100th Anniversary in 2014, of the one-time British Colonial country Nigeria like many other
countries in the world.

Work in progress

”But even Dr. Jonathan is in error believing that “Nigeria as a nation is already 100 years (see pages 5 and 18 of his Address)”.  No, Nigeria – still work in progress – is only 54 years as a nation. Up till  October 1st 1960, Nigeria, like other colonised communities in the world,  was a British Colony. Not a nation.

The recent Centenary Celebrations by  the Nigerian Government, was unfortunately a misplaced celebration, unworthy of champagne-glass clinking.

”However, you cannot do justice to a process of constitution-making, review or charting a course for the regulation and the administration of human societies without recourse to histories; because histories with past and present life-experiences, together constitute the compass needed to navigate and chart a safe course for present and future generations.

”Barely five years into Nigeria’s flag Independence, the then Lt. Colonel Yakubu Gowon in 1966, Head of a military Junta ruling over the new nation asserted and I paraphrase him that ‘ …the basis for one country in Nigeria was not there ?…’

The young man was immediately advised by some conservative Nigerians along with elements of the British Government to retract his belief, expressed from his appraisal of the prevailing situation. Due to time and space, I will skip the tragic story of the ultimate civil war, albeit its relevance for our present task.

”Permit me briefly, to mention the pre-independence Constitutional Conferences of 1953, 1957 and 1959 without delving into details, and the fact that the country had British Governors right up to the eve of independence in 1960. Then, there was the 1963 Constitution, which made Nigeria a Republic.

”However, there was another agenda that motivated and influenced the 1963 Constitution.

The on-going treasonable felony trial of Chief Obafemi Awolowo & ors, arising out of political crisis in the  Western Region of Nigeria from 1962 had ballooned into a serious national impasse.

The 1963 Constitution stopped and prevented appeals from Nigeria to the Privy Council in London, but nevertheless retained a most scandalous slavish and oppressive common law of the British darkest era in terms of respect for fundamental human rights!!

”Incredibly, the slavish doctrine that reduced human beings to the condition of lizards in the control of governments, i.e. that Government can do no wrong – (even up to murder) was actually resorted to and offered, successfully, right through the Nigerian Courts to the Supreme Court in another landmark trial in the Fela Anikulapo case which influenced yet another Constitution in 1978.

See the court records and especially my book, the Jurisprudence of the Living Oracles, chapter 8.

”In 1977, a judge of the Lagos High Court made some  blood-chilling findings of facts in an action instituted by a well-known, popular, albeit non-conformist musician and some others against the military junta ruling Nigeria.

In the judge’s own language: There were atrocities, rampage (sic),  beating (sic) and knocking around of all the inmates of the’ plaintiffs’ compound by soldiers who battered the occupants of the house without any consideration. The soldiers rushed  into the house and threw everybody out naked except the 1st  and 3rd plaintiffs.

They entered into  the main house, set fire to it and the whole house and the entire contents were razed to the ground.

The  female members of the organization were assaulted and battered. There were as many as 52 people treated for various injuries ranging from laceration, burns, to breaking of bones.

It is beyond dispute, of course  that many soldiers, a witness gave the figure of 1,000 surrounded the entire buildings, hauling stones and broken bottles. Many of them got inside the building, set fire to it as well as the generator in the compound.

It was hell let loose.

”But the sustained protests and civil rights activism of the best and the brave in human societies which always stand as the bastion against denial of freedoms and self-rule on planet Earth, led to the promulgation of the 1978 Constitution, which in clear and sacrosanct language enabled, for the first time ever, Nigerians to exercise their human rights. Just imagine, as recent as in 1978 in a so-called Independence Nigeria.

”I was Counsel, together with some noble lawyers in that case, just as I was also a young lawyer on the defence team of Chief Obafemi Awolowo in 1963!

“Then came 1983 when President Shehu Shagari was ‘advised’ that the military would remove him from government for reasons undisclosed.

Shagari himself informed us of this development and requested that our party the Nigeria Advance Party, and the PRP should join his government in order to ward off the threat.

Suffice to say that, we of the NAP declined the invitation because we saw in the proposal hegemonistic tendencies and neo-colonialist mindset that (divide and rule) set people against themselves.”