By Fred Agbeyegbe
From Sir, later Lord Luggard’sroguish amalgamation of the lands and peoples today known as Nigeria and Nigerians, to the date this humble rejoinder hits the airwaves (some 97 years), Nigerians have clamoured to exercise their fundamental right to give themselves a Constitution. The extent of the clamour is evidenced by Suits in the Federal High Court Abuja and Lagos: Suit Nos. FHC/ABJ/CS/367/07 and No. FHC/L/CS/558/09, in which Chief Anthony Enahoro, Wole Soyinka, Odumegwu Ojukwu, C.C. Onoh, Chief Bankole Oki, SAN, Ralph Uwazuruike, Asari Dokubo, Yerima Shettima, Bishop Bolanle Gbonigi, Fred Agbeyegbe, asked for relief that the 1999 Constitution be jettisoned, on the ground that “The 1999 Constitution is a forgery”. Since then, there have been contestations as to whether or not the National Assembly can amend the 1999 Constitution or make a new one.

On August 14, 2011, an obviously “benevolent” Group, in an announcement reminiscent of the evil days of “Fellow Countrymen”, took the electronic media by storm to say:

“We committed ourselves to work for the advancement of the science of governance with the present administration in the larger interest of the Nigeria union.Our group is anxious to be assured of the president’s regard for it and the products of its work. Assurances were given by the leadership of CG who also thanked the distinguished members for their commitment to national interest. The mission of the group, to wit: to forecast or anticipate issues, react or respond to them, offer informed opinions on vital national issues or sector generally in support of good government.”

Wole Soyinka, Asari Dokubo, Itse Sagay and Odumegwu Ojukwu

Significantly different from the “fellow countrymen” syndrome, except for disclosing that Professor Nwabueze, Professor Akin Oyebode, Dr. Jibo Ibrahim, Professor Itse Sagay, Dr. Tunji Abayomi and Olisa Agbakoba will speak at its first outing scheduled later for Port Harcourt and except for exhibiting the photographs of three undoutedly eminent and, from their known past escapades on the Nigerian turf, undoubtedly well-meaning Nigerians, the “coupists” who titled their Missive: “The National Consensus Group (CNG) alias “Project Nigeria”, on “The Way Forward For Nigeria”, did not disclose the identity of the membership of the NCG midwifing the Project.

It must be emphasised that the

Group’s anonymity in no way detracts from the very commendable initiative that the Group has undertaken in this endeavour. One can therefore only wish them well in the mission they have set themselves; although one cannot help noticing that after all the erudition evidently poured into the Group’s “mission” judging from the questions they raised and the other conclusions they reached, which are largely in tandem with what has been mooted over the years and to which the Nigerian authorities have turned deaf ears, the Group arrived at one other most curious conclusion, totally antithetical to their own earlier averred positions. Hear them:

“After much deliberation, we came to the conclusion that it will be an egregious error to constitute a Constitutional Convention on the basis of Ethnic Nationalities. To do so will be to destroy the balance needed to be maintained among citizens. It will be difficult to maintain ethnic equality among over 250 Ethnic groups in Nigeria. With ethnic balance prevalent, we will have retained part of the problem we seek to avoid. Moreover government should be based simply on citizenship or NIGERIANITY as it has been the case in all past Constitutions”.

If that is not approbating and

reprobating, in common parlance, blowing hot and cold, I dont know what is. Whereas the Group having correctly, although without defining, resorted to the word “people” to drive the point home that the “people” are the owners of the right to make Constitutions, which stance entitled them to their readers’ belief that the Group thought it an unnecessary tedium to define the word “people” because everyone knew what it meant and stood for, at least within the context of the discourse, the kindest that one can be to the Group in the face of their undefendable conclusion, is to leave it to conjecture that, if only they had bothered to define the word “people,” they would have discovered and come to the conclusion that it is no less than those indigenous peoples who have the right to self-determination, a phenomenon to which the automatic right to make a Constitution ensues and would not have swayed from the naturality of the word “people”, on a frolic of arrant intellectual rascality, to man-made epitaphs which are neither concept nor phenomena, especially “NIGERIANITY”. What in God’s name is “NIGERIANITY” when what is at issue is an inalienable fundamental right founded upon the peoples’ sovereignty?

It is my view that a comment not hinged on kindness to the Group, flows from three clear reasons. First, the Group’s desire not to base Constitution-making on the right of Ethnic Nationalities is devoid of any empiricism. Second, the Group is therefore “fishing” or flying a kite to see whether, once more, post Luggard, post the Military and post the 1999 Constitution, they can become Nigeria’s new post colonial masters by surrepticiously hoisting, once more, by some subterfuge, a system that continues to dictate to the peoples of Nigeria. Third, apart from erecting a new worthless and meaningless criterion called “NIGERIANITY”, there is nothing new, brilliant or fantastic about anything else they have enumerated in their attempted coup newspaper broadcast. They are welcome to canvass any other reason, short of an attempt to avoid the odium attendant upon their suggestion, as a reason for concealing their identity.

That peoples’ right to make a Constitution is an appendage to the right to self-determination which has found recognition in the highest assemblage of “the peoples of the world” as recorded in Sections 3, 4 and 5 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 2007, applicable in Nigeria. cannot be in doubt. One cannot fail to feel the weight afforded the right to self-determination and its concomitant right to make a Constitution when one recalls that today’s membership of the United Nations that recognises that right by a Declaration, include the predator nations of all times, who in their colonial ascendancy ignored those rights and their past victims and vanquished alike.

For me, for any Group in Nigeria, a

Country that subscribes to the membership and the ideals of the United Nations; a Country wherein British Colonials had compromised the sovereign rights of the people and brought them together as one, without as much as seeking their opinion let alone consent, in spite of their glaring differences; a Country which the military ravaged and left a document which created a fixed master and slave status which it deliberately misnamed 1999 Constitution; it is not only sacrilegous but also suspect that a Group reeling in the erudition that dismissed the 1999 Constitution after drawing all the right conclusions from their own scholarly exploits on the issue, could envisage a Peoples Constitution for Nigeria outside the basis of Ethnic Nationalities.

As an Itsekiri man and an endangered species not to talk of minority in today’s Nigerian affairs, whose entire homeland features on a neighbour’s Map attached to its request for a New State, my comfort zone is largely depleted if not completely obliterated to hear that although I have the right to self-determination acknowledged by the United Nations, I am to sit idly by whilst my fate is decided at some dubiously constituted Constitutional Conference contrapted upon meaningless criteria deliberately fabricated to scheme out my rights. As sure as I am that there are many in this land who share with me similar fate either on the same or other issue, I make bold to serve notice that the earlier it is realised that no acceptable Constitution can emerge from any other format than one in which the basis is the Ethnic Nationalities of Nigeria, the better for everyone. If the Group’s fear is the number of the Ethnic Nationalities, they can be rest assured that modalities abound for ensuring an unwieldy participation by even numbers twice as much.

In all the circumstances, the Group

owes it to Nigerians not only to eleborate on their rather cryptic conclusion, especially having inferred that Mr. President is aware of this daylight attempted intellectual “coup” but also because it is diffiicult for some of us, not so adroit in intellectual jingoism, to fathom the “much” let alone the type of deliberation that went into the preference for man-made Electoral Wards, Local Government Areas, States and Zones, none of which the owners of the land participated in constituting and which are largely, at once, products of the 1999 Constitution, inserted therein to legitimise the “criminal enterprise” that Nigeria is today in which the resources of the ethnic nationalities have been converted into “loot” shared between the institutions created by the 1999 Constitution on a ratio of 75% to the National Assembly and the Executive and 25% to the rest of Nigeria and an adherence to Sir Ahmadu Bello’s unholy admonition to the Descendants of Uthman Dan Fodio:

“The new nation called Nigeria should be an estate of our great grandfather Uthman Dan Fodio. We must ruthlessly prevent a change of power. We use the minorities in the North as willing tools and the South as a conquered territory and never allow them to rule over us and never allow them to have control over their future”, . (Parrot Newspaper, 12th October, 1960, recalled by Tribune, 13th November, 2002.