As the countdown to the July 16 National Constitutional Summit of the Patriots begins, one of the expected delegates, Architect Oyegoke Omigbodun, speaks on why there has to be a holistic constitutional reforms, why all stakeholders in the Nigerian project should be interested and get involved in charting the way forward for the country. KUNLE ODEREMI brings the excerpts:

What is the whole idea about the constitutional summit coming up next week put together by The Patriots, a body of distinguished citizens of the country?

We have had a national conference before. That confab was organised by the Federal Government when President Goodluck Jonathan was in charge of the country. But as soon as he was voted out, the succeeding government of President Muhammadu Buhari did nothing to the report of the 2014 Confab and we have just continued as if nothing has happened. I would want to believe that the summit of The Patriots group may look into the aspects of the Confab report. If I could remember very well there was about an 890-page report from the confab and nothing about all those pages have been implemented. So, the summit may be a unique opportunity to draw attention back to the legitimate report of that Confab and we may be able to see how we can get the National Assembly and the rest of the federal authorities to see what we can do to bring the 2014 Confab report back to the table. Once that is done, we should be able to move forward.

The country is facing a rash of challenges, especially general security of lives and property. Some concerned citizens insist restructuring could go a long way in repositioning Nigeria?..

From some of what I have read in the 2014 Confab report, it has to do with restructuring that some of us are clamouring for. That is the way. I am not going to hide my position and identity as the chairman of Afenifere in Osun State. I?m also a patriot. We believe that we should have the restructuring of this country. Power should move away from the central government that has powers to legislate on 68 Exclusive items right now. So, we should have the number of those items reduced. We should have a situation whereby the Concurrent and the Residual Legislative Lists would swell because if you reduce the Exclusive Legislative list to about 10 to 14 items, it will be in tandem with the spirit of federalism. For example, in most other countries of the world, including the United States of America, where we have borrowed our own brand of presidential system of government, there are only between eight and 12 items on the Exclusive Legislative List.

What are we doing with 68 items? Why should the governor of a state not be able to control the resources under the ground of his state, which the same Constitution says that the governor is the custodian of all the land in his state?

The Land Use Decree was smuggled into the 1999 Constitution. By the way, some of us don?t see that constitution as a constitution indeed. We only refer to it as constitution. I, as an individual, will only refer to it as Decree 24 of May 5, 1999. That is it what it is! It is not a ?We the Peoples? Constitution. It is a lie to have written ?We the people? there when it was just Decree 24 of May 5, 1999. That is what we are still using. We should have a ?We the Peoples? Constitution.? Part of what I also gleaned from the report of the 2014 Confab is that different parts of the country may even choose what kind of government they want to operate. Different parts of the country may decide the number of Local government areas they want. Some can decide to have 200 LGAs, whereas Osun State may decide to have just five.

Politicians have literally jumped the gun ahead of the 2027 general election, which means the mind of a lot them may be substantially skewed from the kind of advocacy by the Patriots on constitutional reforms? There is never a time that is too late to do what is good. Yes, this is coming rather late. But it is better late than never. At least, we are talking on this constitutional summit about the right moment. This is the time that even the National Assembly is debating about carrying out fresh amendments and review of the 1999 Constitution. Public hearings were held across the geopolitical zones that were poorly advertised and therefore, could not enjoy the widespread participation that should attend to such a crucial event. So, The Patriots? summit is yet another unofficial public hearing that is going to draw attention of the global community beyond regions now on the necessity to go back to that 2014 Confab report. A lot of funds went into the Confab and it had an output that has just been put on the shelf. Therefore, it is a good time now and coinciding with the time that the National Assembly just conducted a public hearing. We see The Patriots? summit is an extension of the public hearing because opinions are still going to be expressed by peoples of Nigeria. They will be able to take bearing from the 2014 confab that the peoples of Nigeria participated in and packaged into it a report of about 898 pages. So, we should go back to it and do the needful. I think Nigeria would be in good stead because now, somebody in the extreme cracked a joke recently that if you made Jesus Christ the president of this country, you make Prophet Mohammed the vice president and you make esula-alu the president of the Senate that Nigeria can still not work with Decree 24 of May 5, 1999.

What are the fundamental changes, especially as regards the cardinal principles of federalism that many describe as Nigeria?s era of glory?

That is a good question. I will begin this way. When Chief Obafemi Awolowo wrote his book: My Thoughts on the Nigerian Constitution in 1966, he referred to three critical elements for us to have good governance. He said we must decide what form of government that we want to run. Is it a unitary system? Is it a federal system? Is it a confederation we want to operate? What is it? So, the three things Chief Awolowo referred to include the form of government, the Book of Law that guides the government and the operators of the government. Concerning form of government, he concluded that for a multi ethnic, multi religious, multi-cultural and multi social strata country like Nigeria, only a federal system of government can work and it should be true federalism, not the kind that we operate now.

We don?t have true federalism now; what we have is something that is a far reversal of the original federalism that has been bastardised by the incursion of military into politics. We once had true federalism. We had the three regions and later, four and they had so much powers to do so many things. Each region was controlling 50 percent of its resources, and having 30 percent shared with the Federal Government and only 20 percent was exclusive to the central government. That was true federalism; that was when they could build the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. They were developing in the North; they built the ABU, then the East and the West woke up and started competing with each other. That was why both the University of Nigeria (UNN) Nsukka and the University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), started days ahead of each other. UNN started on October 4, 1962, while OAU started on October 7, 1962. ABU started in 1961.

Each region had their legislatures. They equally did so many things because there was true federalism. But due to the incursion of the military into politics, the generals who were now putting themselves as heads of state could not fathom how a Lieutenant Colonel, who is a governor would be controlling more resources than them. So, they reversed the federal arrangements. That Unification Decree against the reasoning of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who wrote his book, caused us into trouble.

The second element that the sage spoke about is the book of the law that would run the government. That is the Constitution and that also cannot be a military document. So, it is the military that brought us into all this mess. We need to have our own constitution the way the people want it to be.

The third one is the operators. All of us are supposed to be the operators. I laugh when people say those politicians. There are not those politicians; they are not aliens. They didn?t come from Mars or Jupiter. They come from Molete in Ibadan, Oloba Ado in Osogbo and they are your cousins and my cousins. What we should therefore have is that everybody should come out to participate in politics. That is why The Patriots? summit is not about those that you would describe as politicians because those you would describe as politicians are people who are card-carrying members of the registered political parties. No, all of us should be involved. That reporter talking to me should be involved; the Bishop of the church, the Chief Imam of the mosque, the Olori Awo of Ibadan land, everybody should be involved because all of us should determine how we want our country to be run. So that will be taken care of by the summit. (Nigerian Tribune)

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