Five-Year Tenure And The Real Challenges Of Constitutional Amendment
BY
THE 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria has been flawed for many reasons, and by those who are familiar with what a constitution is supposed to be. The summary of the barrages is that it does not cater sufficiently to the needs of all segments of the people. This particular failure stems from the fact that the majority of Nigerians do not know anything about the constitution. They did not participate in the making of this fundamental document. As it is now, they are being forced to live with it.
One major effort to expose the deficiencies of the 1999 constitution was that put together in July 1999, by the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD). That gathering brought together most of the informed and vocal Nigerians who knocked the constitution and described it is a lying document. It was then agreed that in so far as there was no replacement for it, Nigerians will have to see it as an interim document. That workshop immediately constituted a broad based Citizens Forum for Constitutional Reform, specifically charged with the assignment of leading a successful campaign for the reform of the Nigerian 1999 constitution. This is an effort by a coalition of civil society institutions.
The noise made by these cross-section of Nigerians got to the government. In October 1999, the government inaugurated a 21-man review committee to work on the constitution. This showed that even the government was aware that there were anomalies in the document and that the corporate existence of the nation and the attainment of a true federal structure were being hampered by such anomalies.
On that occasion, the government said, "we cannot afford to think along tribal lines. It should be emphasised that the objective of this exercise is to maintain the corporate existence of the nation, provide guidelines to the National Assembly in its task of reviewing the constitution, to nurture and maintain a true federal structure, to correct any manifest absurdities in the provisions of the constitution."
The government agreed that the 1999 constitution was foisted on the people by the military and that the people have no say in its making. The Presidential Constitution Review Committee (PCRC) was made up of 21 people drawn from the existing three political parties as of 1999.
The National Assembly was also interested in reviewing the 1999 constitution. It set up a joint committee on the review of the constitution. This committee is said to have spent over N100 million going round the country to collate views from Nigerians on all the aspects of our national life, which the constitution is supposed to take care of.
It is strange that in spite of the efforts by the coalition of civil society institutions, the presidency and the national assembly, nothing concrete has been achieved as far as fashioning a new constitution for the country is concerned. What we have instead is that the polity is getting more heated up as those fundamental flaws in the constitution are expanding by the day.
The nature of federalism and the allocation of resources to the constituent regions are very fundamental to the smooth running of government. In the absence of a reliable basic organisation, every other step taken amounts to nothing but a faltering attempt.
The most prominent issue in Nigeria's political system of today is that of rotational presidency. Every segment wants to dominate affairs at the centre because the constitution makes the federal government an absolute authority in the disbursement of the common wealth.
Following this is the greed by persons who want to control the affairs of states for two terms of eight years. This greed is given authority by the 1999 constitution which vests the absolute authority in the state upon the governor. The governor expends resources and disburses favours in a manner that suits his whims.
The situation breeds fear and uncertainty. The National Assembly is scared of a leviathan president who will be uncontrollable for eight years. The National Assembly is scared of state governors who will dominate the states for eight years. Some state Houses of Assembly are intimidated by the resources which governors dangle before them. They are cowed, even when it is clear that these governors are not doing what the people ask them to do.
Today, it is now clear that reviewing the 1999 constitution has not been the priority of the key arms of government. It is clear that nobody wants a fundamental restructuring of the system, unless personal gains are being threatened. This is how people view the hurried effort by the National Assembly to carry out an untidy and piece meal amendment of the 1999 constitution to limit the tenure of the president and governors to a single term of five years.
Ordinarily, this would have been a good idea, but it does not summarise all the effort, time and money expended on the Joint Committee of the National Assembly on the Review of the Constitution. This is not what the people require of them. If they have just woken up from a slumber, they should realise that the current political atmosphere does not have capacity to contain a major political catastrophe.
On the issue of the tenure of local government executives, the National Assembly went to sleep until May 18, when they suddenly realised that some work needed to be done. The net result of that failure is that we may not hold local government elections in 2002.
The process of amending the constitution does not lie exclusively with the National Assembly. Even though it is a purely legislature matter, the National Assembly seem not to realise that it needs the backing of not less than two-thirds of all the states to carry out any successful amendment. Here, they need to know that most of the state governors are working in unison with their Houses of Assembly and when the matter gets down, they will work hard to frustrate the process. Section 9 (2) and (3) of the 1999 constitution require that not less than two thirds of all the states Houses of Assembly will team up with the majority opinion in the National Assembly to alter the constitution or the provisions of this section which deals with the mode of altering of the document.
The National Assembly ought to know by now that it has acted ignorantly in so many of its actions without minding the harm it is doing to the people who voted them into office. What the people need is a fundamental restructuring of the country.
Even the timing of this proposal to peg the tenure of the president and governors is coming too late in the life of this present government. In May 2001, Senator Dalhatu Sarki Tafida chairman of the joint committee of the National Assembly for the Northwest on the Review of the 1999 constitution expressed fears that any review of the constitution would be cumbersome because it would require popular demand and support by majority of the 36 states. To push this amendment through will require a considerably long period of debate and the sensitisation of the people. It is not like the impeachment move where the individual conscience of National Assembly members can be bought with some millions of naira.
This is why the Yoruba Council of Elders (YCE) is not impressed by what the legislature is doing with this piecemeal approach to amending a fundamentally flawed document just to eliminate perceived enemies.
There are more fundamental problems to be resolved in the constitution and the legislature must go back to the basis. A five-year tenure is sufficient for an ill-bred government to make life difficult for the people. After all, the second republic did not last for five years, yet the damage recorded in its four years is still here for all to see. The real problem is not with the tenure, it is with the structure.
Nov 2002