I am one of those who supported President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for a number of reasons and one of these reasons was due to his stand on restructuring. Of all the major candidates, President Tinubu had talked and walked restructuring, particularly whilst serving as Governor of Lagos State.
Sadly, it appears that the President is engaging in a “forbacki” dance on the topic of restructuring, on one hand, he has danced forward on the subject as seen in the recent Supreme Court judgement granting financial autonomy to the local government system in Nigeria, but on the other hand he has much dragged his feet on effecting a thorough restructuring of the nation, which can be achieved via the formation and drafting of a People’s Constitution.
This prompted me to pen the article with the title ‘ Will President Tinubu Restructure Nigeria’ sometime in February this year in which my pen declared :
“President Tinubu and his handlers must therefore heed the call by numerous persons calling for restructuring, some of these voices have served as voices of conscience for the nation and did not just wake up now to call for such. He must heed such calls as posterity would much be grateful to him for such an act!”
Now that the President has spoken
I was thus saddened when I watched the same man who had staked so much for a restructured Nigeria tell a group of eminent Nigerians who under the auspices of The Patriots has called on the President to kick start the process for the promulgation of a new constitution which would be crafted out by a Constituent Assembly, that he was busy with the economic restructuring of Nigeria and that he wouldn’t tinker with the idea of a new constitution until he was done with the economic restructuring!
Truth be told without mincing words, the president’s statement put in abeyance the hopes that this administration was very much likely to restructure Nigeria or at least kickstart the process at an early stage of his administration.
His talk, that he is much focused on the economic programmes and perhaps sees the talk of a new constitution as some form of distraction which ought not to be; first of all, we do not know when the economic reforms will begin to bear fruit as we have seen where economic programmes and its dividends took time to mature, sometimes outliving the tenures of these leaders. Second, there is nothing esoteric about the attempts to fashion a new constitution, coming at a point in time that more Nigerians have joined the fray of those calling for such alongside with the numerous clamoring for the splitting of the nation into mini republics, the time for a new constitution is now.
Like President Abraham Lincoln response of “Now! Now!! Now!!!” was when asked why he was keen on getting the votes for the abolition of slavery amendment from the Congress in which he faced a possible loss, whereas he could rely on his Emancipation of Slavery Proclamation as an all time measure even after the war, President Tinubu should understand that the nation is already suffering much from its failure to restructure and that numerous dangers await it further should it fail to pull itself from the brink.
Did previous administrations not seek out political reforms whilst in the process of hammering out economic reforms? Did the Murtala administration not juggle both? Did the Babaginda administration not tinker with the Structural Adjustment Programme and other economic ideas of his whilst carrying out his political experiments which saw him establish the Nigerian Political Bureau of 1986, which debated on the political future of Nigeria and led to it fashioning a report which was debated by the Constitution Review Committee and the Constituent Assembly which then birthed the 1989 Constitution and produced a near seamless transition before that own goal of annulling the June 12 elections.
President Tinubu should know that his call for a new Nigeria, one where the Renewed Hope Agenda of his is expected to usher the nation unto greatness cannot work without the question of the nation’s restructuring, he ought to come to terms with the proposal of the Patriots for a new constitution stems from a desire to better address the multifaceted challenges facing Nigeria. Yes, the New Constitution may not entirely end the nation’s woes, thought must also be given to the strengthening of institutional frameworks too, but then let us begin with the search for such a constitution from which we could clamber out of the morass the nation has found herself in for ages.
By Igboeli Arinze
