BY KINGSLEY OMONOBI
ABUJA — Eminent leaders of thought in the country under the aegis of Project Nigeria Movement have called on the Federal Government to stop further squandering of the nation’s resources on amending the 1999 Constitution.

According to the leaders, government should summon the political will to convene a peoples’ national conference.

Speaking through its spokesman, Mr. Olawale Okunniyi, the movement said  Nigerian people had already rejected the 1999 Constitution, even as amended in 2011, because it lacked the requisite legitimacy and moral basis to continue to compel obligations from Nigerians, given its unpopular origin and narrow reform process.

The leaders said: “The electoral challenges in the country, Boko Haram hostilities and other bottled-up anger in other parts of the country, pervasive corruption in the land, fuel subsidy tension, face-off between governors and the President over national resources are all functions and symptons of the template created by the military in 1999 for the failure of the Nigerian democracy.

”We hope government will listen to the voice of the people and do what is right before this contraption goes up in flames. Government cannot continue to spend huge funds to amend an imposed military decree in the name of the 1999 constitution and hope to get the people own, respect and defend such dictation called laws.

“It would still be sensible for Nigerians to be law abiding in an unconstitutional democracy like Nigeria, where the military in active connivance with their political allies decided to shut out majority of Nigerians from democratic governance through clever imposition of the 1999 constitution.”

Okunniyi added that an eminent team, led by elder statesman and erudite constitutional lawyer, Prof Ben Nwabueze, was currently harmonizing two political reform bills of the group ahead of its proposed Political Reform Conference slated for November in Kaduna.

Some of the leaders of the Project Nigeria Movement include Alhaji Maitama Sule, Prof  Ben Nwabueze, Dr Tunji Braithwaite, Dr Kalu Idika Kalu, Chief Audu Ogbeh, Dr Lateef Adegbite, Barr Olisa Agbakoba, Mr. Ledum Mittee, among others.