16
Jul
Jul
NIGERIAN ELDER STATESMEN CALL FOR COMPLETE CONSTITUTIONAL OVERHAUL
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CapitalTimesNews / 2 weeks
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- 3 min read
A gathering of Nigeria’s elder statesmen, legal luminaries, and political figures has delivered a scathing indictment of the country’s constitutional framework and political class at the opening of the National Constitutional Summit in Abuja. The summit, organised by The Patriots in conjunction with the Nigerian Political Summit Group, featured powerful speeches calling for a complete overhaul of the constitution, citing crippling insecurity, endemic poverty, and a flawed electoral process as direct consequences of the current system. Human rights lawyer and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Chief Femi Falana, directed his criticism at both the judiciary and the legislature for frustrating electoral reforms. “I wish to submit without any fear of contradiction that Nigerian courts are totally opposed to the introduction of any form of electronic voting,” Falana declared. Falana recounted how the Supreme Court had previously ruled the use of card readers for accreditation as illegal and, more recently, deemed the use of BVAS machines and electronic transmission of results as “optional” rather than mandatory. “In the case of intellectual and identity, the Supreme Court said the use of device machines and transmission of reports electronically was optional for high-legal compulsion,” he lamented. Falana expressed profound distrust in the current National Assembly to enact changes to the Electoral Act of 2022 to mandate these technologies. “The current set of legislators are very uncomfortable with the current electoral system that allows manipulation of accreditation of voters. And they are not willing to allow reports to be electronically transmitted so that the status quo can continue,” he said. Falana also dismissed the National Assembly’s ongoing constitutional review process as a “sham,” describing their zonal public hearings as tokenistic. “The only way you can throw away the 1999 constitution is through a revolution,” he concluded. However, former President Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, represented by Secretary General of Eminent Patriots of Nigeria, Olawale Okunniyi, offered a contrasting perspective, arguing that the character of the political operators was a more pressing issue than the constitution itself. “Whatever the strength or weakness of a Constitution, the most important issue to my own understanding and experience are the operators of the Constitution,” Obasanjo wrote. Obasanjo delivered a sharp critique of the nation’s leadership over the past 15 years, saying, “No matter what you do to Nigerian Constitution, if the operators of the Nigerian Constitution for the past one decade and a half remain unchanged and continue in the same manner, the welfare and well-being of Nigerians will continue to be sacrificed on the altar of selfishness, self-centeredness, corruption, impunity, and total disregard of the Constitution, decency, morality, integrity and honesty.”
