Judiciary
A former president of the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA), Chief Wole Olanipekun, SAN, yesterday recalled how former president Olusegun Obasanjo rejected his advice to amend the nation’s constitution, saying that the former president almost “boxed him when he gave him the advice.
The legal luminary, who said this while delivering the 32nd and 33rd convocation lecture of the Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU), Ago-Iwoye, Ogun State, where over 15,428 graduands were awarded bachelor degrees, postgraduate diplomas, and higher degrees, called for a complete overhaul of the nation’s constitution.
The university also conferred honorary doctorate degrees on Akarigbo Remoland, Oba Babatunde Ajayi, and the immediate past Pro-Chancellor of the institution, Mrs. Mosun Bello-Olusoga.
Delivering his lecture titled “Mass Exodus of Human Capital in Nigeria: An Anatomical Analysis of the Causes and Effects,” he blamed insecurity, a faulty constitution, bad economy, and “awkward” federalism for the mass exodus of young Nigerians to developed countries.
Olanipekun said that as the President of NBA in 2002, he led a delegation of members of the association to former President Obasanjo, where he advised him to commence the process of amending the constitution. Still, the former president not only rejected the advice but almost “boxed” him.
He said, “We need a constitution with a humane face. I’m a lawyer, but we are deceiving ourselves; our constitution is fake, and I have said this repeatedly, but then you will ask lawyers, ‘If we say the constitution is fake, why are we practising it’? Lawyers and judges apply the law as it is, not as it ought to be, so we apply the law as we have it now, and we have been pleading that we should amend the constitution; let us overhaul it.
“I, as president of the NBA, led a delegation of the association to President Obasanjo in 2002; he almost boxed me; I’m here in Ogun State, and I’m saying this; he is still alive; he said, ‘No, you can’t change it’, I said, Mr. President, let us seize this opportunity to do it.
“We also appeal to the powers that be now, to our President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, that the time for us to restructure this country is now. If we do not do it, these children that we are raising abroad might not return home; they won’t come here,” Olanipekun said.
He described previous alterations to the constitution as “charades and widow dressing” and called for the restructuring of the country.
“While I appreciate the efforts of successful National Assemblies towards birthing a workable document, which has over the years led to the first, second, third, fourth, and now fifth alterations, I maintain the view that all these remain a charade, or better put, a window dressing, as the foundation/origin.
“A lot of untruths and misplacements abound in the present constitution. For example, Section 2(2) of the constitution describes Nigeria as a ‘Federation’, when in actual fact, it is a ‘Unitary Constitution’. How can a country be a Federation when “the entire property in and control of all minerals, mineral oils, and natural gas in, under, or upon any land in Nigeria or in, under, or upon the territorial waters and the Exclusive Economic Zone of Nigeria is vested in the government of the Federation?”
“What is then left for the component units known as the states? The effect of this is that all states queue at the Federal Capital Territory monthly for handouts, rather than the states contributing to the centre. As far as I am concerned, this is the beginning of our economic woes, which is sending Nigerians fleeing the country in their droves.”
“In terms of security, how do we have a federal government with federating states where the governors do not have any jurisdiction or power over the security systems or apparatus in their states, yet a governor is casually labelled as the Chief Security Officer of his state? He does not appoint the Commissioner of Police in his state, as all he hears is the deployment of a Commissioner of Police to his state. He has no say, even in the deployment.
“We should stop deceiving ourselves by sending police commissioners from any state in the north to the south-west or to the south-east, or vice versa, when such police commissioners have never been to such places before or have any idea or knowledge of the language or dialect of the people. How then does he communicate or enforce security? Nigeria is too big and large a country for a constitution to pretentiously foist on us a single police command under the aegis of the Inspector-General of Police,” Chief Olanipekun said. (vanguard)
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-February 1, 2024 @ 09:10 GMT|
Tags: Akarigbo Remoland Chief Wole Olanipekun Mrs. Mosun Bello-Olusoga. Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) Oba Babatunde Ajayi
