If elite jousting over constitutional provisions and political structure is an indication of political vibrancy, Nigerian democracy has never been in finer fettle. In the past few months alone, two separate elite groups have convened to discuss matters pertaining to the country’s political configuration and the felt imperative to amend parts of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, respectively.
The first was the 83-member Parliamentary System Support Group (PSSG) which met in Abuja last November with the hope of instigating a nation-wide dialogue on what it describes as a “homegrown parliamentary system of government.” Arguing that the current presidential system is “not working” because “it does not fit into our cultural system and other values” and that “the last twenty-five years has not given Nigerians what they expected,” the Group called for “a home-grown parliamentary system” that not only reflects “the procedural aspects of governance but also the intrinsic values, goals and cultural nuances of the people it serves.” In accordance with the mood at the occasion, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr. Tajudeen Abbas, extolled the virtues of “indigenous governance” and stressed the need for “crafting a legislative system that resonates with the everyday realities, aspirations, and diversity of the Nigerian people.”
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Two weeks ago in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), a group of elder statesmen under the auspices of The Patriots urged the country to “to adopt a full-scale restructuring of the country now or risk disintegration in future.” Whereas, for the PSSG, the adoption of the presidential system was the country’s “first mistake,” for The Patriots, the “original sin” of the Nigerian Fourth Republic is the 1999 constitution which, according to its spokesperson, former Commonwealth Secretary-General Emeka Anyaoku, is not fit for purpose because “it is not suited to the needs of a pluralistic country like Nigeria.” Therefore, for Anyaoku and The Patriots, nothing less than “a return to the truly federal constitution that began its [Nigeria’s] independence journey” will do.
This is not the first time that The Patriots, who once claimed that “even an angel will not succeed governing Nigeria with the 1999 constitution” have advocated a return to the principles of the 1963 constitution which, on paper, devolved more power to the federating regions. During a visit to the State House last August, representatives of the group had counseled President Tinubu to initiate the process that will lead to the realization of “the genuine Nigerian people’s constitution” by, among other measures, convening “a national constituent assembly with the mandate to produce a draft people’s democratic constitution.”
Viewed as an extension of what social discourse in the country has classified as “the national question,” neither the agitation for political restructuring nor the clamor to retire the 1999 Constitution is new. Indeed, if anything is predictable about either, it is a pattern whereby those currently out of political favor vigorously canvass them, only to go dark as soon as they assume control of the levers of state power. Political hypocrisy aside, there seem to be legitimate grounds for disaffection, for instance with a presidential system that seems to require an arm and a leg to operate, and a constitution that, despite all evidence to the contrary, Nigerians across various sectors continue to see as a military imposition. For such people, more than a writ in whose preparation they had no tangible input, the 1999 Constitution is one of the last vestiges of a traumatic experience of which the country as a body cannot wait to be exorcised.
While neither of these groups is necessarily wrong about the country’s dysfunction (for instance, PSSG lamented “mind-boggling corruption” and the spectacle of “a government that grows fat on bloated overheads, delivering scant dividends to its citizens” while The Patriots pointed to pervasive “corruption and breach of public trust”), it is far from clear that amendments to the constitution, say, or a return to “a homegrown parliamentary system of government,” whatever that means, offers a solution. As a matter of fact, taking into consideration the substantive socio-cultural problems invoked by both groups, their subsequent recommendations in terms of a new political system or updates to the statutes are non sequitur. For instance, it seems quite evident that the problem with corruption in Nigeria is not the absence of laws, given that the malaise has worsened in inverse proportion to the increase in laws and the number of institutions set up to combat it.
The point, just to be clear, is not that amendments to the Nigerian constitution are not warranted, or even necessary in certain cases, or that ways cannot be found to make the presidential system as currently operated less expensive; nor is one disputing that unscheduled ‘conventions’ like the ones discussed here are on a certain level testimony to how far the country has traveled twenty-five years after sending the soldiers back to the barracks. If anything, the quarrel is with the assumption that Nigeria’s problems as defined are amenable to amendments and political revisions as such.
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To understand the nature of the dysfunction in contemporary Nigeria—and, consequently, why constitutional engineering as such fundamentally misjudges the problem—consider, for instance, something as banal as everyday Nigerians openly violating traffic laws. Or the persistent problem of filth in major cities across the country, one that the frustrated author(s) of a recent newspaper editorial on the subject described, with evident frustration, as “intolerable,” adding: “Many homes lack sanitary facilities, markets and motor parks are clogged with waste, and vast stretches of land are dotted with human waste, as if to suggest that the inhabitants of many towns and cities are decidedly subhuman.” On an even less pleasant note, consider a recent incident involving a suspected thief who was stripped naked and beaten by a Lagos mob. Not satisfied with humiliating its victim, the mob then decided to heat the groundnut oil the alleged thief had been accused of stealing, making sure to pour it on his back before leaving him for dead.
The immediate foregoing represents three distinct facets of the problem of order in contemporary Nigeria, and no matter the number or quality of guesses that the perplexed student may hazard, one thing is clear: these are not a category of problems amenable to constitutional engineering, because order is one thing you cannot legislate into existence. No constitutional amendment, not even a brand new “people’s constitution,” can reverse social anomie.
Ultimately, the conversation that Nigerians need to have—about repeated, casual violations of the dignity of the individual; a penchant for lawlessness that cuts right across class, regional and ethnic lines; and what Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka calls “the degradation of human life” which has become “the thesis, the essence of Nigeria at present on all levels”—these cannot be limited to well-meaning efforts by members of the political elite, but must involve the kind of radical self-confrontation that, so far, Nigerians have been reluctant to have.
The elite groups are right about the state of affairs in Nigeria, but they are wrong to imagine that a problem so profound and so debilitating can be apprehended through a mere amendment to the statutes.