The Patriots headed by the former Secretary-General of Commonwealth, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, on Friday urged President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to convene a Constituent Assembly to draft a new constitution for the country.....CONTINUE READING THE ARTICLE FROM THE SOURCE
Briefing State House correspondents after a meeting with the president at the Presidential Villa in Abuja, Anyaoku said, “Nigeria needs a people’s democratic pluralistic Constitution because the current Constitution lacks effective internal security measures, among other lapses.”
He stressed the need for the president to submit an executive bill to the National Assembly for a national referendum to approve the draft constitution. He said countries like Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and Sudan disintegrated due to poor management of their diversity. “My colleagues and I are very pleased to be here. We’ve had a very constructive meeting with the President. We, the Patriots, and I believe you know what the Patriots are. “The Patriots are a nonpartisan group of eminent Nigerians, some calls, leaders of thought, who are committed to the unity of our country and good governance of our country under a legitimate people’s democratic constitution.
“So we came to convey this view that Nigeria needs a people’s democratic constitution. Nigeria, we affirmed to Mr. President, is a pluralistic country. And you all know that pluralistic countries exist all over the world.
“Those of them that addressed their pluralism by having true federal constitutions have survived. Examples are India and Canada.
“But those pluralistic countries that failed to address their basic challenge of pluralism through the federal Constitution have ended up disintegrating; examples of that are Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia and here in Africa, Sudan.
“These countries existed in the case of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia for about 100 years as one country, but they eventually disintegrated because they could not manage their pluralism through truly the federal constitution.
“And we put some proposals to Mr. President and we urged him to send a president’s executive bill to the National Assembly, a bill that will call for two essential measures.
“One the convening of a National Constituent Assembly, to be mandated to produce a new draft constitution and we suggested that such National Constituent Assembly should consist of individuals elected by the people on non party basis.
“Say for example, three individuals per state, per each of the 36 states and one from the Federal Capital Territory and they should be mandated to produce a new draft constitution.
“And we also suggested that in the bill, the National Assembly should be asked to legislate for a national referendum because as our laws stand at the moment, we have no provision for a national referendum.
“And we concluded by saying that the Draft Constitution to emerge from the constituent assembly should be subjected to the national referendum in order to give the peoples of Nigeria a chance to determine the new constitution.”
The group also urged the president to engage in dialogue with #EndBadGovernance protesters leaders and advised law enforcement agencies to refrain from using lethal force to manage protests
“We also talked about the current crisis of protests throughout the country. And we advised the President that in our view, the government at the federal and state levels should dialogue with the leaders of the protests. The government should take the initiative in dialoguing with the leaders of the protests.
“And secondly, we advised that the law enforcement agencies, namely the police and the army, should avoid using lethal weapons in the management of the protests, so that we do not have casualties, people killed because the law and order enforcement agencies are managing the protests. So, these were the points that we put to Mr. President,” he said.
