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09/08/2024
Emeka Anyakou
Well, ladies and gentlemen of the media. My colleagues and I are very pleased to be here. We've had a very constructive meeting with the President.
We the Patriots, and I believe you know what the Patriots are. The Patriots are a nonpartisan group of eminent Nigerians, some calls, leaders of thought, who are committed to the unity of our country and good governance of our country on under a legitimate people's democratic constitution.
So we came to convey this view that Nigeria needs a people's democratic constitution.
Nigeria, we are affirmed to Mr. President is a pluralistic country. And you all know that pluralistic countries exist all over the world. Those of them that addressed their pluralism by having true federal constitutions have survived. Example is India and Canada.
But those pluralistic countries that failed to address their basic challenge of pluralism through federal Constitution have ended up disintegrating. Examples of that Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia
and here in Africa, Sudan.
These countries existed in the case of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia for about 100 years as one country, but they eventually disintegrated because they could not manage their pluralism through truly the federal constitution.
And we put some proposals to Mr. President and we
urged him to send a president's executive bill to the National Assembly, a bill that will call for two essential measures.
One the convening of a National Constituent Assembly, to be mandated to produce a new draft constitution. And we suggested that such National Constituent Assembly should consist of individuals elected by the people on non party basis. Say for example, three individuals per state, per each of the 36 states and one from the Federal Capital Territory and they should be mandated to produce a new draft constitution. And we also suggested that in the bill, the National Assembly should be asked to legislate for a national referendum because as our laws stand at the moment, we have no provision for a national referendum.
And we concluded by saying that the Draft Constitution to emerge from the constituent assembly should be subjected to the national referendum in order to give the peoples of Nigeria a chance to determine the new constitution.
We also talked about the current crisis of protests throughout the country.
And we advised the President that in our view, the government at the federal and state levels should dialogue with the leaders of the protests. The government should take the initiative in dialoguing with the leaders of the protests. And secondly, we advised that the law enforcement agencies, namely the police and the army, should avoid using lethal weapons in the management of the protests, so that we do not have casualties, people killed because the law and order enforcement agencies are managing the protests.
So these were the points that we put to Mr. President.
Did Mr President respond to the things you put before him? Secondly, then you put before him a request for a Constituent Assembly to be put together again. We've had many of them. Couldn't Nigeria, have decided to go for one of the ones held in the past, considering how our finances are at the current because it's going to cost a lot to put that together again.
Well, let me answer the first question about the cost of Constituent Assembly. Because we've had other similar meetings in the past.
I do not believe that with the challenges facing this country,
the challenge of
national unity,
challenge of insecurity,
the challenge of poverty and hunger.
I do not believe that the cost of setting up a constituent assembly with the mandate to produce a Constitution. Because all these challenges that we are currently facing, are symptoms of the inappropriateness of the Constitution that we have at present. The inappropriateness of the governance system we have at present. And I'm sure that when a National Constituent Assembly, looks at all these and looks at all the recommendations of past efforts to call national conference and produce a draft constitution that would make it easier for these…
