GIVEN how it started, struggled to gain traction and finally petered out without cohesion, I doubt if anyone or group of persons could be justifiably called the organisers of the #EndBadGovernance protest. But just when its so-called organisers chose to make a final statement of defiance by bringing it to a grand end on its tenth day with a so-called one-million-man march protest, then did the once highly respected group of elderly Nigerians and technocrats, the Patriots, went knocking on the door of President Bola Tinubu at Aso Villa. It was an August morning visit of a very August group of our country people now led by the very respectable and dignified Chief Emeka Anyaoku, a former Secretary General of the Commonwealth of Nations. 

Coming up at the time the bread-and-butter protest was coming to a disorganised end and both Abuja and the purported organisers of the protests were not sure of where things stood or what was to happen in the wake of the riotous direction the largely uninformed and under-aged protesters in the North of the country had taken it, the government was apparently ready to listen to anyone or group that was willing to offer any advice. It was a time of both solicited and unsolicited counselling and for a government that had been accused of wilful deafness it had to be seen to be listening. 

Beyond the circumstances that surrounded the visit – the protests and the government’s panicky response and all of it, the Patriots are of a distinguished pedigree. They were the product of Nigerian politics but from a slightly different era. They go a few decades back to the transitional years from a military dictatorship to civil governance. Initially led by the revered old man of the Nigerian bar and bench, Chief Rotimi Williams, the group sought to provide direction at a time of political confusion, when the country was at a crossroads. Professor Ben Nwabueze took the leadership baton after Chief Williams passed away. At over 90 years of age, it’s been the turn of Chief Anyaoku to lead the Patriots in the last couple of years following the mortal exit of Prof. Nwabueze. 

There is, therefore, no doubt that the Patriots throws a punch commensurate to its weight in the men and women of calibre that populate its rank. But that rank has also been infiltrated by some whose garment of integrity may have been stained by politics, however cleverly they might have tried to conceal the stain. At any rate, they visited the president and they were accorded the honour due to people of their status. They came on a mission and with, not a bucket list, but a single demand: a request for constitutional change. In specific terms, the Patriots wanted President Bola Tinubu to immediately begin the process for the change of the present 1999 Constitution. It’s not a new demand. Rather, it’s a demand Nigerians from all walks of life have made and have been making since the beginning of the Fourth Republic. 

President Tinubu has himself been in the forefront of such a demand as a key and long-time player of politics in the post military era. As a member of the opposition and fervent supporter of the restructuring of Nigeria, President Tinubu has advocated for constitutional change. It was a major pillar of his democratic credentials. Making such demand of him, as did the Patriots, should be like preaching to the converted. But the great irony, in fact conundrum of the Nigerian situation, is that advocates of constitutional change or the radical restructuring of our political architecture in the post military years are steadfast until they gain power and become wiser or foolish to their position. They suddenly get into power and discover how and why their long-held position on constitutional change is no longer tenable. 

The malaise of Nigerian politics is so formidable that those who hope to cure have often spent so much time trying that their own resistance to the disease would have been long compromised by the time they come face to face with the problem they set out to resolve. Olusegun Obasanjo didn’t quite commit to making any such structural changes given the circumstances of his emergence as a product both of the military and the conservative North, the bastion of opposition to any constitutional change. Tanko Yakassai, himself one of the Patriots,  is already voicing the North’s opposition to the latest call of the Patriots. Even when President Goodluck Jonathan summoned the courage to convene a constitutional conference, he could not bring himself to implement the very far-reaching decisions of the conference. No thanks to the North. 

If he had not died at the time he did, President Umaru Yar’Ádua, perhaps, could have implemented the decisions of the 2014 conference (organised by his successor), being a Northerner. He had the temperament that allowed him to reject positions that were morally flawed even if they favoured him. It was the reason he condemned the electoral process that brought him to power in 2007. It was in this spirit that he spearheaded the rehabilitation of Niger-Delta militants through the amnesty programme. Had he lived long enough, he was one person that could have taken the plunge to restructure Nigeria and this would have been far more manageable than if a Southerner had tried it. This is the bane of the demand for the restructuring of the country, the fact that no Northerner has so far, in the fashion of Mikhail Gorbachev, been willing to commit political suicide nor has any Southerner who came to power with the support of the North had the courage to bite the finger that fed them. 

So when the Patriots tabled their demand, it should not surprise us that they could not get the unqualified support of Tinubu. Resolving the issues with the economy, he told them, was his immediate priority. It would be hard for anyone to deny that the question of fuel subsidy removal with its spin-off of inflationary chaos in other sectors; the unification of the foreign exchange market and the attendant devaluation of the naira are fundamentally economic issues. A president in the eye of the storm as Tinubu currently is cannot reasonably do anything else without inviting the ire of Nigerians. 

After the present economic problem of high price of petrol and uncontrollable inflation has been resolved, then can we move to the fundamental issue of constitutional change. Tinubu or any future Nigerian  president can only ignore the urgency of constitutional change and a restructuring of the polity at theirs and Nigeria’s  peril. The “We the people” opening of the 1999 Constitution is a false attribution that can no longer hold. It must change and changing it, to borrow an expression from another bygone era of national crisis, is a task that must be done.