Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Mike Ozekhome, has advocated for a new constitution describing the current one as “fundamentally flawed” which no good economy can arise from.
Ozekhome, a member of the Nigerian Patriot Group said this while speaking in an interview with ARISE NEWS on Friday about the Patriots visit to President Bola Tinubu to present a proposal for drafting a new constitution that reflects the country’s diverse and pluralistic society.
He stated bluntly, “When the super structure we are operating is fundamentally flawed, no good economy can come out of it. You cannot get something nice from a bad product.”
He argued that the current constitution, which was a product of Decree No. 24 of 1999, lacks legitimacy and fails to address the country’s complex ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity. “The Nigerian constitution under which we are presently operating is actually an illegitimate constitution because it was a mere schedule attached to Decree Number 24 of 1999,” he emphasised.
The Nigerian Patriots, a group initiated by the late Chief Frederick Rotimi Alade Williams and comprising eminent Nigerians and thought leaders, believe that the nation’s stability and prosperity depends on acknowledging and respecting its pluralistic nature.
Ozekhome stressed that the current system, which he described as a unitary government disguised as federalism, cannot continue if Nigeria is to thrive.
“Nigeria is a pluralistic society with over 374 ethnic groups speaking more than 800 languages. Such a group must be allowed to exist in its pluralistic nature without the people being forced to be one as if the other ethnic groups don’t matter,” he explained.
He further highlighted the importance of a constitution as the “birth certificate of a nation,” detailing how it serves as the foundational document that resolves how citizens live together and the rules of engagement.
Ozekhome pointed to countries like Switzerland and India, where pluralistic constitutions have successfully maintained unity in diversity. “Countries that are pluralistic and obeyed this plural nature in their constitution with a referendum, like Switzerland and India, live very well together because they realise their differences, so they live in unity with diversity,” he noted. In contrast, he cited the breakup of the USSR and Sudan as examples of what could happen when pluralism is not adequately addressed in a constitution.
In advocating for a new constitution, Ozekhome called on President Tinubu to introduce an executive bill to the National Assembly to set up a National Constituent Assembly. This body, he proposed, should draft a new “people’s constitution” that is truly federal and indigenous to Nigerians, and most importantly, subjected to a referendum.
“We are saying that the National Assembly should bring about the Constituent Assembly, and then the Constituent Assembly should elect persons on a non-party basis and allow all the ethnic nationalities to be represented,” he suggested.
Ozekhome also aligned with former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s suggestion for a single-term presidency, arguing that the current electoral system is wasteful and detrimental to governance. “I have argued this for more than five, six years. Nigerian elections are too wasteful, we practice not democracy but ‘electionocracy’. After the first election, they try to use one and a half years trying to govern the people, but towards the end of this year, politicking, which has already started, will be fully blown,” he lamented.
He urged President Tinubu to act swiftly, stressing that the urgency of the situation demands immediate action. “We didn’t give the president a timeline because it would be unfair, but we impressed it upon him that he should introduce this bill with the urgency of yesterday because virtually all the problems you are seeing in the country today are because we have never really agreed to come together as one people after the January 1, 1914 amalgamation of the North and South,” he stated.
NANCY MBAMALU
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