Thursday, 28th March 2024
To guardian.ng
Search
Law  

Nigeria’s sovereignty is not sacrosanct, says Agbakoba

By Joseph Onyekwere
11 July 2017   |   3:38 am
Former president of the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA), Dr. Olisa Agbakoba (SAN) has said that Nigeria’s sovereignty is not sacrosanct. Agbakoba said it is only sacrosanct for politicians who are eyeing the 2019 general elections.

Dr. Olisa Agbakoba (SAN) has said that Nigeria’s sovereignty is not sacrosanct. Agbakoba said it is only sacrosanct for politicians who are eyeing the 2019 general elections.

Former president of the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA), Dr. Olisa Agbakoba (SAN) has said that Nigeria’s sovereignty is not sacrosanct. Agbakoba said it is only sacrosanct for politicians who are eyeing the 2019 general elections.

According to the senior lawyer, what is sacrosanct about Nigeria is that we have to agree whether we want to be together. “I don’t understand why nobody gets this small point. Nobody can force his wife to stay with him; you can’t force sovereignty or force someone to live with you,” he stated.

He made the statement in a press conference on the state of the nation in his Ikoyi office in Lagos. The lawyer also condemned the agitation for restructuring, arguing that restructuring would not work in the context of giving power to the regions, lamenting that the country is yet to develop a home-grown constitution since independence.

His words: “Nigeria sovereignty is not sacrosanct. It is only sacrosanct for those who are eyeing 2019. They will do this, deceive and go into 2019, pretending that restructuring is the issue. They are now climbing on the bandwagon of popularism. Can you imagine somebody like Obasanjo and a joker like IBB talking about restructuring? When they were there what did they do? I don’t understand why we are so gullible in this country. It is not in the interest of Nigerians to listen to what I call the conspiracy of the elites. The conspiracy of the elites is to be found in APC, PDP or whatever party that emerges for 2019.”

He stated that the acting president, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo (SAN) was wrong to have said that Nigeria is indissoluble. “There is nothing sacrosanct about Nigeria. It can blow up any day. It is an artificial creation made in 1914 and when it was amalgamated, we were not there. It was created for the interest of the colonialists who wanted to export things from Nigeria. And since 1914 till date, we have not had any autochthonous (home grown) constitution in which the people are involved and that is the problem. So to just go to restructuring without asking some key questions, I think is fundamentally flawed.

0 Comments