I REGRET nothing as much as my inability to be at this very crucial meeting being hosted at its head office in Abuja by the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), the leading agency of civil society in Nigeria. I salute the NLC for hosting this meeting. And I welcome everyone present.This meeting is being held under the umbrella of an Organisation known as PROJECT NIGERIA. Project Nigeria is synonymous with the life of our dear nation. Is Nigeria to be or not to be' That is the critical question the Organisation has set itself to address.I think it may truly be said that the vast majority of Nigerians agree on an affirmative answer. And I take this opportunity to say: Long live Nigeria!! We must all repeat it in unison.The question remains, however, as to how this supreme objective is to be accomplished. The answer, of course, is that Nigeria must be re-designed and rebuilt, not re-branded.To rebuild a house, you must re-design the super-structure. If the super-structure is not got right, the edifice must wobble continuously, as Nigeria has been wobbling since it was built by the British colonialists.Now, the super-structure of a state, like Nigeria, is its constitution. In the democratic age in which we live today, the generally accepted super-structure for a stable, enduring state, not a wobbly one, is a democratic constitution, otherwise called a People's ConstitutionWhat is a democratic constitution or rather why is a democratic constitution called a People's Constitution' The answer lies in the meaning of democracy itself. Democracy is a form of government in which the People is everything ' the ultimate law-maker; the source of all power; the bestower of the mandate or authority, through their votes at elections, for the exercise of power by those elected to rule. The people in a democratic state are more besides. They, through the medium of public opinion, have been rightly described as :'that invisible guardian of honour ' that eagle eyed spy on human actions ' that inexorable judge of men and manners ' that arbiter, whom tears cannot appease, nor ingenuity soften - and from whose terrible decisions there is no appeal''It became the resolving force not only of political truth but of all truth ' from disputes among religious denominations to controversies over artistic taste. Nothing was more important in explaining and clarifying the democratization of the American mind than this conception of public opinion. In the end it became America's nineteenth-century popular substitute for the elitist intellectual leadership of the Revolutionary generation.'There is no more apt description of the People in a democracy than that of the great French jurist and philosopher, Alexis de Tocquevelle, in his immortal classic, Democracy in America (1835) :'The doctrine of the sovereignty of the people took possession of the state. Every class was enlisted in its cause; battles were fought and victories obtained for it; it became the law of laws'.The people reign in American political world as the Deity does in the universe. They are the cause and the aim of all things; everything comes from them, and everything is absorbed in them: (emphasis supplied).The characterisation of the people as 'the law of laws' emphasises the revolutionary nature of the people as law-maker, with authority to make a constitution and bestow the force of law upon it. When an existing legal and political order is overthrown in a people's revolution, not a military or other coup de'tat, there is no other body higher than the people to frame a new order and give it the character or force of a law.de Tocquevelle was not theorising. He was describing a practical phenomenon as he observed it in 1835 during his stay in the United States of America studying the workings of democracy there. Professor Edward Corwin, generally acknowledged as the greatest authority on the American Constitution, endorses de Tocquevelle's description of the people as 'the law of laws'. The U.S. Constitution, he wrote, 'obtains its entire force and efficacy, not from the fact that it was ratified by a pre-existent political community or communities ' for it was not ' but from the fact that it was established by the people to be governed by it'.From what I have said above, it should be clear to us that a constitution is not democratic simply because it establishes a democratic form of government. Democratisation rests on a false and weak foundation if a democratic form of government, as enshrined in the constitution, is not in fact the choice of the people expressed by means of a national conference, followed by approval at a referendum or by a constituent assembly specially and specifically elected for the purpose. A democratic constitution must thus be distinguished from a democratic form of government. A constitution must both be adopted by a democratic process and establish a democratic frame of government in order to establish a true democracy.There is a tendency in some quarters in this country to dismiss all this as having but a symbolic value, with no practical significance. This is not true. But even if it is true, as it certainly is not, symbols have very great importance in the life of a people. 'We live by symbols' said Justice Frankfurter of the U.S. Supreme Court. Uniforms worn by state officials, coins and currency notes, national flags, anthems and pledges ' these and a host of others are all symbols signifying state authority.The practical significance of a democratic constitution in the context of Nigeria, as in the context of the rest of Africa, lies partly in the nature and structure of our society. It is in this respect that Nigeria and Africa differ fundamentally from the U.S. and Europe. Whilst each of the original thirteen colonies and, even more so, each of fifty States that make up the United States today, comprises peoples of different languages, races, religions and cultural backgrounds, each of those different peoples does not, by and large, inhabit a separate territorial area as to constitute a separate territorial entity, as is the case in Africa. The diverse ethnic groups comprised in the state in Africa, the Hausa/Fulani, Yoruba, the Igbo, the Ijaws, the Urhorobos, the Ishekiris, the Efiks, the Ibibios and other ethnic groups in Nigeria for example, inhabit each a separate territorial area, which constitutes them a separate territorial entity. Creating a nation out of a diversity of peoples each inhabiting a separate territorial area and constituting a separate territorial entity confronts a problem fundamentally different in nature and character from that faced by the Americans since 1787.Given this peculiarly complex nature and character of ethnic diversity of the state in Africa, something of the diversity must remain and be preserved after the creation of a nation out of it. This is necessarily implied in the notion of unity-in-diversity; it implies the preservation of diversity as a basis for creating a nation, not its complete obliteration, which is like a delusionTherefore, any drive in this country towards re-building or re-creating Nigeria would be sheer self-delusion if it did not recognise and preserve something of the existence of the diversity of ethnic groups or if it tried to obliterate them completely. In any drive towards the creation of a nation out of a diversity of ethnic groups existing as separate territorial entities , the existence of such groups should be openly and frankly recognized as a social reality that can no more be wished away or banished than we can disregard our own individuality. 'For most of us,' writes Professor Claude Ake, 'these social formations and group identities are not externalities but the core of our being; it is by these identities that most of us define our individuality'. For most Africans, Alan Merriam also says, 'the reality'..is not the centralised state, but rather a mixing of the political with the social structure in a formulation which rests upon villages, tribes and, at the most, regions.''Rather than consider ethnicity and nationalism as contradictory and opposed,' Professor Ade Ajayi has suggested, 'it is better to think of a gradation of loyalties from family to community, to linguistic group or state, and to the nation.' A national unity in which the ethnic groups have no part can only be, in Robin Luckam's apt expression, a 'seamless' one, and therefore liable, sooner or later, to break apart into its several component parts.On this issue of ethnic identity and loyalty, the views of Professor Sir Arthur Lewis are compelling and deserving of mention here. 'Any idea', he writes, 'that one can make different peoples into a nation by suppressing the religious or tribal or regional or other affiliations to which they themselves attach the highest political significance is simply a non-starter. National loyalty cannot immediately supplant tribal loyalty; it has to be built on top of tribal loyalty by creating a system in which all the tribes feel that there is room for self-expression.'So when we speak of the People in a democracy, the concept has a somewhat more complex connotation in Nigeria and Africa than in the United States, Europe and some other parts of the world. It connotes not only the people as individuals but also the people as members of ethnic groups constituting territorial entities. Accordingly, the first step in the adoption of a People's Constitution for Nigeria is to bring the ethnic groups together around a conference table, a National Conference, to discuss and agree on how to live together in peace, comity and unity as one people and one nation ' how, in particular, state power and revenue are to be shared between the central and regional governments in a way as to maintain equitable balance, and how the office of president of the country is to rotate among the ethnic nationalities grouped in zones or regions. The outcome of such a Conference will then be embodied in a document to be submitted to the entire People for adoption at a referendum. No number of Constitution Review Committees can be a substitute for a National Conference.Project Nigeria is working on how this process is to be accomplished, which will then be embodied in a draft Bill to be submitted to the Presidency.Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen. The fate of our country is in our hands. I have earlier referred to the NLC as the leading agency of civil society in Nigeria. So much, therefore, depends on it. We will have a National Conference, a People's Constitution and a new Nigeria the day the NLC says so.The Movement Towards The Democratisation Of The ConstitutionThe American precedent of adopting a constitution through a democratic process (National Convention in Philadelphia and state Conventions, i.e. constituent assemblies) has since become a world-wide phenomenon since 1989 under the catalytic force of the democratic revolution. With the exception of the Bulgarian Constitution, which was adopted by a national referendum on 16 May, 1971, none of the constitutions in force in communist countries of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union before the time of the democratic revolution of 1989 ' 90 was a truly democratic constitution. They were all enacted by their parliaments. This is perhaps in consonance with the socialist ideology, which recognised sovereignty as belonging only to the working people, not the entire people. In communist ideology too, parliament represents and embodies the sovereignty of the working people. It should be stated in parenthesis that, with the transition of society to the full-scale construction of communism in the Soviet Union, the concept of sovereignty as belonging to the working people only was considered in 1961 to have served its function, and was, accordingly, abandoned in favour of a new conception of the state as a state of the whole people ' a socialist all-people-state. This new concept was explicitly affirmed in the 1977 Constitution of the USSR. Yet, notwithstanding the recognition in the Constitution of a referendum of all the people as a method of deciding certain questions of national importance, the making of a constitution or its amendment was still reserved exclusively to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (parliament). Apparently, the societies of the countries of Eastern Europe had not yet progressed to the full-scale construction of communism, since the constitutions of most of them still spoke of the sovereignty of the working people.All this has now been swept away in the wake of the democratic revolution of 1989 ' 90, and the new transition constitutions of the countries of Eastern Europe and the USSR were in each case adopted through a constituent assembly and/or through a referendum.In line with the tradition, therefore, the transition constitutions in all but five of the countries of former French Africa were submitted to, and adopted by the people at a referendum on the following dates ' Benin on 2 December, 1990; Burkina Faso, March 1991; Mauritania, 12 July 1991; Niger, 12 May 1996; Madagascar (not a new Constitution but an extensive revision of the existing Constitution) 15 March, 1998; Guinea, 23 December, 1990; Morocco, 11 September, 1996; Comoros, 20 October, 1996; Djibouti, 4 September, 1992; Congo (Brazzaville), 15 March, 1992; Central African Republic, 28 December, 1994; Mali, 12 January, 1992; Chad, 31 March, 1996; Togo, 27 September, 1992; Gabon, 21 July, 1995. Remarkably, none went for a specially elected constituent assembly which was used in some of the countries in the past, all now opting for the real thing ' the people themselves directly.In four of the remaining five of these states, transition was effected, not by means of a new constitution, but under the existing constitution suitably amended by a law enacted through the ordinary legislative process, but the existing constitution itself had been adopted by the people at a referendum, - Cameroon (existing Constitution of 1972 amended for the purpose of transition by a law of 1996); Cote D'Ivoire (existing Constitution of 1960 amended by law of 1990, with further amendments in 1994 and1998); Tunisia (existing Constitution of 1959 amended by law of 1988); and Senegal (existing Constitution of 1963 amended by law of 1994, as further amended in 1998). The fact that the existing constitution was adopted at a referendum does not, however, justify the sidetracking of the people in the making of a major and fundamental amendment involving change from one-party system to multiparty democracy; after-all, as noted earlier, the revision in Madagascar was approved by a referendum.Algeria is thus the only country in former French Africa in which a new Constitution, transiting the country from military rule to multiparty democracy, was adopted in 1996 without submitting it to the people for approval in a referendum, but this was apparently because of the state of emergency declared following widespread violence by Islamic fundamentalists; the previous Constitution of 1976 had been approved at a referendum.Like in nearly all the countries of former French Africa, a referendum was the method used in adopting the transition constitutions of the two former Spanish colonies ' Equatorial Guinea (referendum of 16 November, 1992) and Sao Tome and Principe (referendum of August 1990). So also Ethiopia's transition Constitution of 1995 and Eritrea's of 1997 are both democratic constitutions; they were adopted by constituent assemblies specially elected for the purpose on 8 December, 1994 and 23 May, l997 respectively. (Ethiopia's Socialist Constitution of 1987 was also a democratic Constitution, having been adopted in a referendum).On the other hand, the transition constitution in three of the four former Portuguese colonies ' Cape Verde (1990) only an amendment to the existing Constitution of 1980), Guinea-Bissau (1991) and Mozambique (1990) ' was adopted, not by the people at a referendum, but through the ordinary legislative process, just as was the case with their independence constitutions. In the case of the latter, being the product of victory in the just concluded war of liberation the unsettled conditions of a war-torn country did not permit of the rather laborious process of organising a referendum. The civil war in Mozambique provides justification for not putting the transition constitution through the democratic process of a referendum. The pre-existing Constitution in Angola has not been changed or amended at all, owing the disruptions of the Civil War, which has prevented any action being taken on the separate draft constitutions prepared by MPLA and UNITA.Three countries have had no transition or, in the case of Egypt, no need for a transition. Egypt's 1980 Constitution has remained in force since, with the one amendment made to it on 20 May, 1980; both the main 1980 Constitution and the 20 May, 1980 amendment were approved at a referendum.Libya, another of the three countries, has remained without a formal constitution properly so-called since the overthrow of King Idris in a military coup in 1969. It has been governed principally, in the initial years, by the Constitutional Proclamation issued on 11 December, 1969 by the Revolutionary Command Council, and, since 1979, by the Declaration on the Establishment of the Authority of the People issued by the General People's Congress, by the Resolutions of the Congress, and by Colonel Gaddafi's precepts as contained in his Green Book. To Gaddafi, 'parliaments have become a means of plundering and usurping the people's authority'; political parties are instruments of a 'sham democracy', and plebiscites, 'a fraud against democracy'. Somalia, the last of the three countries, is still operating without a transition under its 1979 Constitution, which was adopted in a referendum.The seventeen countries of former British Africa had all hitherto been shackled by the British tradition of not recognising the people as a constituent power, with authority to adopt a constitution either directly in a referendum or through a constituent assembly specifically elected and mandated in that behalf. Every one of them came into existence as an independent state with a constitution made for it by the British Government by an order-in-council. And in every case too, Ghana excepted, their post-colonial constitutions or constitutional amendments adopted before 1990 were made by the ordinary legislative process ' just as in Eastern Europe and in the former Soviet Union before 1989.Such is the gratifying break with the inherited tradition that nine of the seventeen (Namibia included) have transited to multi-party democracy since 1990 with constitutions adopted by the people in a referendum ' The Gambia, Ghana, Malawi, Seychelles, Sierra Leone and Sudan ' or through a constituent assembly specially elected for the purpose ' Namibia, South Africa and Uganda ' the 1983 Constitution of South Africa was approved in an all-white referendum in November of that year by 1,360,223 votes in favour and 691,557 votes against. (The referendum in Malawi and Sierra Leone was not on the entire Constitution but only on whether the existing one-party system should be retained or be changed to a multi-party one; the latter system was approved in both cases ' in Malawi by 1,993,996 votes as against 1,080,173). The approving votes at the referendum were 96.7 per cent in Sudan, 87 per cent in Ghana, 73.9 per cent in Seychelles (the first draft of the Constitution in Seychelles was rejected, having received only 53.7 per cent of the votes cast in an earlier referendum, instead of the 60 per cent required by the enabling law).In four of the other eight countries, the ordinary legislative assembly was the authority that enacted either a new transition constitution ' Lesotho ' or amended the existing one for the purpose ' Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia. Of the remaining four countries, three ' Botswana, Mauritius and Zimbabwe ' have always allowed more than one political party, and so needed no new constitution or constitutional amendment to transit them to multi-party democracy, while the fourth ' Swaziland ' has remained a no-party state under an absolute traditional monarch who appoints the head of government and members of the national assembly, thereby making the legislative elections held in October 1993 a sham. There is, however, in the country (Swaziland) an ineffective movement, which is not a political party, called the People's United Democratic Movement, demanding a republican constitution and multiparty elections. Neither Botswana nor Mauritius has adopted a new Constitution since independence, but the independence Constitutions have undergone series of amendments, using the amendment procedure provided in that Constitution i.e. by an act of the legislative assembly passed in the prescribed manner and form and assented by the president. A new Constitution for Tanzania, enacted by the national assembly in 1981, has remained in force, with amendments, since after transition in 1992. Zambia did adopt a new post-transition Constitution in 1991, but this was enacted by the national assembly. Proposals for a new Constitution for Zimbabwe were submitted to, and rejected by, the people in a referendum in 2001.It follows that only three countries ' Lesotho, Zambia and Nigeria ' can categorically be said to have remained still shackled by the British tradition of not recognising the people as the authority to adopt a constitution either directly in a referendum or through a constituent assembly specially elected and mandated in that behalf. That as many as ten countries (including Zimbabwe) have embraced the referendum or a specially elected constituent assembly as the method for adopting a constitution is, as earlier stated, a gratifying break with the out-moded tradition on the matter inherited from British colonialism. It is noteworthy that the preamble to The Gambia's transition Constitution of 1996 ' a preamble was not in the earlier Constitutions ' describes the use of a referendum to adopt it as an 'accomplishment of a great and historic task' by 'the people of The Gambia'. (The absence of a preamble in the constitutions of African countries made by British or shaped by its tradition is another conspicuous legacy of British colonialism in Africa).It is noteworthy too that, following an earlier innovation in Ghana's 1960 republican Constitution, which was adopted at a referendum, the transition Constitutions of both Ghana (1992) and The Gambia (1996) make their more fundamental provisions unalterable except by a referendum.Is it not, therefore, a shame that Nigeria, the so-called giant of Africa, is, since its transition from military rule to multiparty democracy in 1999, still being governed under a Constitution made for it by the military' The implication is clear : we are not a sovereign people. For, a sovereign people without constituent power or denied its constituent power is a contradiction in terms.
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