Nwabueze backs restructuring, says constitution undemocratic

• Senior lawyer wants geo-political zones or regions

Elder statesman, foremost constitutional lawyer and professor of law, Ben Nwabueze, has declared that Nigeria’s democratisation rests on a weak and false foundation and that until proper restructuring is carried out by the constituent parts through the drafting of a new constitution that is endorsed in a referendum the current ills of corruption, injustice, ethnic militias among others will continue to fester.

Nwabueze addressed these issues in a book, The National Question and Corruption, scheduled to be published tomorrow in Lagos. While contemplating the all-important question of how to forge a united country out of the disparate ethnic nationalities that make up Nigeria, he regretted that Nigeria has been unable to practise true federalism.

“The 1979/1999 Constitution failed to serve that purpose because of the over-concentration of power and financial resources in the Federal Government, creating more disunity than unity, because of the intense struggle for the control of the centre,” he said.

In a new constitution to be made, Nwabueze proposes the restructuring of the country into geo-political zones or regions so as to whittle down the powers at the centre.

By this proposal, the constitutional lawyer argues that Africa and Nigeria had existed as ethnic nationalities long before colonialism yoked these nations into modern states.

In stating the motives for the book, prompted by the rampant corruption in government and the rise of ethnic militias from across the regions, Nwabueze states that “The National Question is concerned with how, while preserving something of their identities, the immense number of diverse ethnic groups in the territorial area of the state created with the name Nigeria and forcibly imposed by British colonialism can be coalesced and united into one nation and how the state so created can order the relations among the constituent groups to facilitate such coalescing.”

He expounds the national question to include: “First, what is an ethnic group in the Nigerian or African context; how many ethnic groups are comprised in the Nigerian state? Second, what is a nation in the context of the existence of an immense number of diverse ethnic nationalities to be coalesced or united into one nation?

“Third, how are the divergent demands for the preservation of something of the separate identities of the component ethnic groups and their creation into one, united nation to be balanced together?

“Fourth, does the National Question tantamount to the issue about the absence or otherwise of civil order in Nigeria or, put differently, what is the connection between the two?”

Nwabueze further argues that the ethnic nationalities predated the state in Africa before the advent of colonialism and that they must be taken into consideration in drafting the constitution so they have a sense of belonging.

According to him: “In the normal sequence of things, a nation predates a state, i.e. it exists before a state is then created out of it through a process. Regrettably, in Africa, the sequence was, tragically, reversed; the state came into existence before the nation – the nation is still in the process of being created.

“However, absurd as it may seem to speak of ‘a state without citizens,’ it is true of the 53 states created in Africa by colonialism, none of which, with the possible exception of Swaziland and Lesotho, two traditional kingdoms, were at the time of their creation as states by colonialism, a nation, since none were characterised by the existence of a single unifying indigenous culture as the basis for nationality or nationhood and for united corporate existence.

“Every one of them, with the exception of the two above, was so created by foreign colonialists by forcibly merging together various culturally diverse groups.”

The only democratic device to mitigate this colonial creation, Nwabueze proposes, is true federalism as enshrined in the 1960/1963 constitution that had the four regions competing for development.

As he puts it: “Its purpose is to enable each group, free from interference or control by the others, to govern itself in matters of internal concern, leaving common interest to be managed centrally, and those which are of both local and national concern to be administered concurrently. With the decentralisation of powers to the regional governments and the consequent reduction in the powers exercisable centrally, the national government became an instrument of total domination, so that the question of who controls it can be expected to excite less conflict and bitterness than if all powers are concentrated at the centre.

“Part of the challenge of federalism in a new, emergent state comprising culturally diverse and territorially segregated groups is to structure it as to secure a reasonably acceptable balance between unity and diversity. Our federal system based, as it is, on the unity-in-diversity approach, has failed to achieve our desired objective of creating one Nigeria nation, because of the over-concentration of powers and financial resources in the centre at the expense of making sufficient accommodation for ethnic diversity, although ethnic diversity is thereby entirely sacrificed.”