Without more ado, let the gleaner concentrate on aspects, some aspects of the issues that Comrade Dr Osagie Obayuwana concerned himself with in the Comrade Jonathan Ihonde memorial lecture. The essential points which appealed to the gleaner (and the listeners) will not be over-laboured. Those to be given sufficient and detailed attention will be given sufficient and detailed consideration. 

I thought of the lecture (as I still think of it) as one volley of one of our radical, rebellious lawyer-activists whose activism is radiantly revolutionary as ever as he delivered his thoughts clearly and with sympathetic, but also critical, understanding of the philosophical, humanistic and legal issues examined. His context (which is our present reality) helped explain his over- riding idea to the audience (his listeners) who hooked on his superb delivery. The clarity and concision with which the barrister activist presented some unmistakably abstruse legal ideas was truly commendable. 

The lecture began with topical concerns centring, first, on the 1999 Constitution of decadence that fraudulently opens or introduces itself with the key words “We the people.” The phrase always revives in the consciousness of the people and especially of lawyers and key professionals and activists the dishonesty of the conceivers and framers of the unholy anti- Nigeria document that up to now has been touted as the constitution, the correct constitution, embodying the rights of the citizens of the Nigerian state.

The proper magnitude of the fraud is revealed when Comrade Dr Osagie Obayuwana tried to dissect it side by side the 1979 Constitution which equally was against the real and actual needs of the people and against the law of necessary justice to guarantee the happiness of every Nigerian citizen. The two constitutions are examples of two bad documents that will not change the circumstances of especially the downtrodden and minority peoples from bad to good. In making and evaluating his points, the comrade cited the minority constitution of 1978 framed by its co-conceivers and co-authors in the persons of Professor Segun Osoba, a now retired history professor of the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University), the late historian Yusufu Bala Usman of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria and the mathematician Dr Edwin Madunagu, formally of the University of Lagos and ex-The Guardian columnist. The three of them were radical scholars and intellectuals, who were members of the 1978 Constitution Drafting Committee of seventy-eight persons (after the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo declined to serve in it). 

It was composed or consisted of by and large conservatives who conspired to accept the Minority Constitution as a mere chapter two of what eventually was produced as the official 1979 Nigerian constitution. According to Comrade Obayuwana, all the excellent recommendations of the minority one – which as just intimated – are confined to chapter two of the majority constitution, are prohibited from being admitted or cited as essential or significant aspects of the constitution. They are merely there to hoodwink the people.

The recommendations are not justiceable – meaning that nobody can go to any court of justice to ask or argue for their acceptance and legally compel their implementation. The image of the very healthy, very ethical, or/and very moral chapter two is thus an unhealthy and unjust one which has been so constructed or, better, which has been so re-constructed by the anti-people conservatives according to their incorrect rules. (I am refraining from citing here numerous examples Comrade Osagie Obayuwana cited to make his solid submission because it will be too burdensome for me to do so.

But the devils and their cohorts who have been in power one way or the other since the said time-frame certainly know what is being alluded to here). Every single day since 1979 would have been a single day of good fortune for each one of us if the Segun Osoba-Yusufu Bala Usman-Edwin Madunagu troika or triumvirate had their day and way! If I am repeating myself here, I am doing so with pain, the painful kind of painful pain our fellow rebel felt when he was delivering his unequivocally engaging lecture. 

Our quality of life has been jettisoned by the conservatives. But the 1999 Constitution must be amended to reflect the rights that every citizen must enjoy: Rights to education, employment, good food, accommodation, good health, good transportation system, old age benefits to all, even to private retired farmers, traders, artisans and other professionals.

All these and other benefits are not mere aspirations and objectives which the conservatives in their conceit consigned to the almighty chapter to which, as already said, is un-justiceable – according to their gospel of wickedness. This is undemocratic.

The new constitution must reflect the necessary changes for the benefit of all the various professional bodies and societies, such as, for example, the Nigerian Medical Association, Nigerian Society of Engineers, Nigeria Bar Association, civil societies, academic unions, and students’ unions that must democratically participate in the current amendments to give us a people’s constitution worthy of its name and befittingly acceptable to all after all disputes and contradictions are democratically resolved. Each argument that Comrade Dr Osagie Obayuwana tendered won his audience the merits that his lecture deserved. 

An important issue that Comrade Obayuwana drew attention to was that of President Tinubu’s government’s attempt to rein in Professor Pat Utomi who dared to set up a shadow government which the central government has misconstrued for what it is not. Obayuwana said, forcefully, that President Tinubu’s action in this wise as in other wises is undemocratic.

According to him, Professor Utomi was only – and righty so – exercising his right as a democrat to offer alternative suggestions to the central government to the delight of all democrats. That Tinubu’s government has taken Pat Utomi to court and toyed with the idea to charge him with treasonable felony is bewilderingly bewildering. The president is anti-democratic in his reactions to healthy suggestions.           

Is President Tinubu really democratic? Is he really a comrade? Dr Comrade Obayuwana tried to answer the question that was clearly not a rhetorical one by giving the audience this illustration: While he was in Lagos, before finally coming to Benin in the heydays of our civil societies’ daring to dare General Sani Abacha, the then maximum military ruler of our country, Bola Tinubu always attended their meetings in Dr Beko Ransom Kuti’s residence.

He always sat at the back without uttering a word. When the time came to face bullets, Bola Tinubu ran away into exile. Simply put, he was with them but he was not really with them. Thus the question answered itself. One thing constant about him was his inconsistency. President Tinubu is not deepening democracy but dictatorship and tyranny. Our president is a president of ambiguity. He is a social and political chameleon. What a revealing information!

Now I must terminate my report here. Let me leave the other things unsaid. What an inspiringly inspiring lecture Comrade Jonathan Ihonde, one of our foremost comrades, who was consistent to the end, will cherish and cherish where he is elegantly lying still now.     
Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.