A former President of the Nigerian Bar Association and popular legal practitioner, Chief Wole Olanipekun (SAN), shares with TUNDE AJAJA his thoughts on the clamours for a new constitution and how the country can overcome its challenges
As a foremost lawyer, what do you make of the clamour for the restructuring of the country?
I didn’t just start advocating for the restructuring of Nigeria yesterday; it’s been a long time that I have been calling for the overhauling, replacement and restructuring of the 1999 Constitution. When I was the President of the Nigerian Bar Association, I led a team of lawyers to the then President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, and among the things we suggested to him stoically and patriotically was the overhauling of the constitution. We also volunteered to assist him, but he didn’t like it. I told him in clear terms that this constitution would not take us anywhere. One thing I have noticed is that at all levels, every person who comes to power and is enjoying the benefits of the present situation as brought about by the constitution want the status quo to remain. You also see a lot of people who have not been consistent. If you love your nation, you have to be consistent about your prognosis and views. When I talk about my nation, I talk as an elder who enjoyed Nigeria when it was good, when education was virtually free and there was liberty and security. At my age and as a lawyer, I should be able to say the truth to power. Honestly, I feel bad about this country. Nigeria has a lot of fiends and a few friends and it’s sad that everybody wants to take advantage of this country.
You said a few months ago that Nigeria needs a new constitution but some people feel we can make do with amendments because they feel it’s near impossible to convene a constituent assembly that would draft a new constitution, how do you think we can go about it?
Lord Denning said years ago in Macfoy vs UAC that you cannot put something on nothing, and Nigeria’s Supreme Court re-echoed it with approval through two beautiful jurists, Kayode Eso JSC and another jurist. May their souls continue to rest in peace. True to that statement, you cannot put something on nothing and expect it to stand. A constitution should be de facto and de jure, meaning in fact and in actuality; in practice and in theory; in honesty and in sincerity. I’m familiar with the social media to an extent and I listened to Chief John Nwodo, the Minister of Information during the regime of former Head of State, General Abdulsalami Abubakar (retd.), who foisted this constitution on us. He said the constitution was drafted by about 47 persons, out of which 40 were military personnel. Nwodo has been my friend since our Student Union days in the early 70s. He was at the University of Ibadan while I was at the University of Lagos. He’s not given to frivolities and I can beat my chest for him to a reasonable degree. He said even when Obasanjo was to be sworn in, there was no clean copy of the constitution. Is that the way it is done, for 47 persons to prepare the constitution that governs a diverse nation like Nigeria? Elders of this country must stand up to be counted; do we just want to live by the convenience of today and not think of tomorrow; what happens to our children and grandchildren? It is not a question of who is in power, it started since the time of Obasanjo. It’s sad that some people are not even ready for intellectual discourse and that is why once they have a view different from yours, you become an enemy. Why are we treating Nigeria like a bastard? We are being unfair, unjust, careless and ungodly about this country.
Politicians have shifted the discourse to 2023 already, do you agree with those who feel that is misplaced?
Politicians can be very funny and arrogant about the future. It’s only God who owns 2023, but people are already talking about 2023, which is still two years away. By and large, if you want to be elected into any office in 2023, don’t you want to govern people that would be alive? Then, you need a working document. We still have two years three months to May 2023 and that is enough time to do something. Failure to do that, if an Igbo man or a Yoruba man win, we will witness the same thing we are experiencing under President (Muhammadu) Buhari. Then, where are we going? Is that a way to build a country? Many of us were busy trying to out-speak one another during the last election in the United States, whereas we don’t have a system or institutions here.
The reservations most people have with the constitution starts from the Preamble, what is your take on that?
I will take you through some constitutions of the world and we will compare. First, the preamble in our constitution says ‘We the people of Nigeria…’ Who are the ‘we’? That is fake and false and it’s not something we should be proud of. Let’s start with the constitution of Albania of 1998. The preamble reads, ‘We the people of Albania, proud and aware of our history, with responsibility for the future, and with faith in God and/or other universal values, with determination to build a social and democratic state based on the rule of law, and to guarantee the fundamental human rights and freedoms, with a spirit of religious coexistence and tolerance….’ My goodness! Why can’t we have something like this? Look at the religious coexistence part? They simply took cognisance of their past, why are we denying ours? That was 1998, a year before Abdulsalami imposed ours on us. God has been kind to give Nigeria good, intelligent and focused people who would think of the nation and not themselves, but what have we made of that? The Albanian preamble continues, ‘…with a pledge to protect human dignity and personhood, as well as for the prosperity of the whole nation, for peace, well-being, culture and social solidarity, with the centuries-old aspiration of the Albanian people for national identity and unity, with a deep conviction that justice, peace, harmony and cooperation between nations are among the highest values of humanity, we establish this constitution…’ This is the way it is done. Even God invited people, as stated in Isaiah 1:18 that come and let us reason together’. Who are you to say I don’t have a right to contribute to the present and future of my country?
Which other country can we learn from?
Let’s talk about Algeria, another country that didn’t run away from its history. The preamble of the 1989 constitution reads, ‘The Algerian people are a free people and decided to remain so… having fought and still fighting for the freedom and democracy, the Algerian people by this constitution decided to build constitutional institutions, based on the persuasion of the Algerian people…’ They mentioned constitutional institutions; do we have institutions in Nigeria? No. I dare say the only enduring institution in Nigeria today is the Presidency, not as characterised by the incumbent, but as it has been since 1999. PUNCH reported how the Ooni of Ife and the governors of Ondo (Rotimi Akeredolu) and Oyo (Seyi Makinde) states met with the President over insecurity. My brother, Makinde, a man in whom I’m well pleased, needed to run to Abuja to demand for Mobile Police units, in a federal republic? I’m not blaming him; I’m blaming the warped, undulating, slippery, undetermined, mercurial system and organogram of the nation. There is nothing wrong with going to see your President, but where the constitution is fair and not selfish, why can’t Oyo State be able to have its own police system?
You also mentioned Argentina, how does theirs compare to ours?
Let’s look at the preamble of Argentina’s 1853 constitution, ‘We the representatives of the people of the people of the Argentine Nation, assembled in General Constituent Congress by the will and election of the provinces which compose it, in fulfilment of pre-existing pacts, with the object of constituting the national union, ensuring justice, preserving domestic peace, providing for the common defence, promoting the general welfare, and securing the blessings of liberty to ourselves, to our posterity, and to all men in the world who wish to dwell on Argentine soil: invoking the protection of God, source of all reason and justice, do ordain, decree and establish this Constitution for the Argentine Nation.’ Can you compare them? The preamble should reflect your history and aspirations as a people, but what do we have here? Let’s look at the preamble of the Brazilian Constitution of 1988, which reads, ‘We the representatives of the Brazilian people, convened in the National Constituent Assembly to institute a democratic state for the purpose of ensuring the exercise of social and individual rights, liberty, security, well-being, development, equality and justice as supreme values of a fraternal, pluralist and unprejudiced society, founded on social harmony and committed, in the internal and international orders, to the peaceful settlement of disputes, promulgate, under the protection of God, this Constitution of The Federative Republic of Brazil’. Can you see the clear difference?
You also mentioned Egypt and Ethiopia, both of which are African countries.
Egypt is one of the oldest civilisation as stated in the Bible. The preamble of their 1980 constitution reads, ‘We, the people of Egypt, who have been toiling on this glorious land since the dawn of history and civilization; we, the people working in Egypt’s villages, fields, cities, factories, centres of education, industry and in any field of work; we, the people who believe in our spiritual and immortal heritage, and who are confident in our profound faith, and cherish the honour of man and of humanity at large…..; our people have passed through successive experiences, meantime offering rich experiences on both the national and international level and being guided by them, which ultimately took shape in the basic documentations of the July 23 revolution, led by the alliance of the working forces of our struggling people.’ You see how rich that is, but here we are behaving like the ostrich, trying to bury our past? Let’s look at Ethiopia, another great empire rooted in civilisation and history. The Ethiopian Constitution of 1995 has this preamble, ‘We the nations, nationalities and people of Ethiopia…’ Nigeria also has a lot of nations, nationalities and peoples, like the Yoruba, Igbo, Fulani, Hausa, Kanuri, Tivs, Ijaws, etc. Look at how their constitution recognises these but ours was silent on that.
Do you surmise that a beautiful preamble and constitution would put an end to the problems Nigerians are dealing with today?
A constitution brings about harmony. If tomorrow we say we want to restructure this country, have a new constitution and we want the leadership of all the ethnic nationalities to assemble five or 10 persons to gather and do it, all these wars would stop. Pending when we would do it, let us give ourselves one year for everyone to bury the hatchet. Let each ethnic group come and say its position. Let me tell you briefly about Germany, ‘Conscious of their responsibility before God and men, animated by the purpose to serve world peace as an equal partner in a united Europe, the German people have adopted, by virtue of their constituent power, this constitution…’ We can also look at the 1950 constitution of India. India has the most voluminous constitution in the world and is also a federal constitution. The preamble reads, ‘We the people of India, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a sovereign socialist secular democratic republic…’ You would see that it was the people who constituted India into a state. It is the people of Nigeria that should constitute the country into a state, not the other way round. The Indian preamble reads further, ‘In our constituent Assembly, this 26th day of November, 1949, do hereby adopt, enact and give to ourselves this constitution.’ So, when people say we should amend, do you want to take something out of nothing or you want to put something on nothing? You want to amend a void as it were? We can also learn from the 1997 Constitution of South Africa. The preamble reads, ‘We the people of South Africa recognise the injustices of our past, honour those who suffer for justice and freedom in our land, respect those who have worked to build and develop our country and believe that South Africa belongs to all who live in it…so as to heal the divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights…’ Again, our own preamble says, ‘We the people of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, having firmly resolved and to provide this constitution for… do make…’ Where did we agree and when did we resolve on all these?
Rwanda is a fast-growing African country, did their constitution play any role in making that happen?
If you look at the Constitution of Rwanda made on May 26, 2003, the preamble reads, ‘In the wake of the genocide that was organised and supervised by unworthy leaders…’ why don’t we mention this in ours too? It continues, ‘…and other perpetrators and that decimated more than a million sons and daughters of Rwanda resolve to fight the ideology of genocide and all its manifestations…’ That is a good foundation for a country that wants to develop. In Nigeria, what ideology are we fighting, yet we have them; religion, tribalism, mediocrity, cheating, corruption, election rigging, discrimination, ungodliness, etc.? It adds, ‘…and to eradicate ethnic, regional and any other form of divisions, determined to fight dictatorship by putting in place democratic institutions and leaders, freely elected by ourselves, emphasising the necessity to strengthen and promote national unity and reconciliation which were seriously shaken by the genocide and its consequences, conscious that peace and unity of Rwandans constitute the essential bases for national, economic development and social progress.’ This is how to prepare a constitution, but you can only put this kind of preamble there if you actually met. In our case, instead of eradicating those ideologies, we are promoting them by our actions and inactions. That is why I feel so pained that instead of listening and talking about the way forward, people are talking of 2023. Why are we not doing the right thing?
The ruling All Progressives Congress promised Nigerians restructuring but six years after, it has remained a lofty promise. How do you feel about that?
It is being drummed everywhere that there is an El-Rufai committee report on restructuring, why don’t they bring it out? Sometime ago, I think I heard a respected leader from the North, Prof Ango Abdullahi, say the North was prepared for restructuring and they want a parliamentary system. Then, let us debate it. Personally, I will key into that because it is less expensive. To me, the constitution as we have it and operate it now constitutes an encumbrance, taking away our resources.
Originally published at Punch