Chief Goddy Uwazurike, lawyer and former vice president of the Igbo Think Tank Organisation, Aka Ikenga, spoke to TUNDE  AKINOLA on the prospects of getting the constitution amended the in the New Year

Do you have confidence in last year’s public hearing on the review of the 1999 Constitution?

LET me put it this way, the National Assembly can amend the 1999 Constitution because the constitution gives it the power to amend it. They try to take in the interests of all, by saying at least, that a certain number of states’ Houses of Assembly must by simple majority approve that resolution to amend the constitution. The whole aim is to make sure that as many people as possible in Nigeria take part in the amendment of the Constitution, through the elected representatives.

I am aware of the clamour by some people right now that they want a referendum; that they want more people involved. The National Assembly has responded in part, by having what they called town hall meetings and public hearings in the 360 constituencies of the House of Representatives. In states where it held people were involved and all the professional bodies in those regions were allowed to make their input. Right now, without any fear of contradiction I will say the people have taken part in the attempt to amend the constitution.

Some people still think what we need is a new constitution

Everything we do today is based on the 1999 Constitution. It is the grund norm, the basis through which the National Assembly is doing what it is doing. If you are talking of a new constitution that means you are asking for a revolution, which means we must do away with the old one and make a new one. If you do away with this present Constitution, the president, governors, lawmakers and everybody loses power, and whenever they lose power it becomes a revolution. At the moment there is no provision for a new constitution, what we have is a provision for amendment and the procedures, which must be followed step by step. If you miss a single step then you have failed.

As a chieftain of the Igbo think tank, what are the demands of the Southeast in a new constitution?

The South East is in a unique position, unique because if you ask the problems they will tell you right away. They have five states in the Southeast zone; one has seven while others have six states each. So structurally, the Southeast has been marginalised. They cannot do what others are doing, so they ask for equity. Believe me it is equity that determines how balanced the federation is. We are asking for fairness and justice. As it is, the Southeast is being made subservient to every other region, so when they are asked what they want, it is simple.

First is state creation; secondly, the protection of the rights of its indigenes wherever they are, welfare of all indigenes, right to reside and take part just like every other people, irrespective of their states of origin. Above all, the average person in Southeast wants justice. By nature, we are travellers in the Southeast; right now, people are moving away from terrorist insurgents in the North. All we need is equity, justice and the right to live.

How feasible in your view is the clamour for presidency by the Southeast?

I will like to make a distinction between a president coming from the Southeast and the idea of ‘Igbo presidency’ as some media always say. We did not have a Yoruba presidency when Olusegun Obasanjo was the President; we did not have a Hausa presidency when late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua was there.  Just as we do not have an Ijaw presidency now that someone from Southsouth is there, we cannot have anything like Igbo presidency. That is an erroneous assertion.

Obasanjo came from the Southwest, Yar’Adua came from the North and President Goodluck Jonathan from the South-south. For the sake of justice, we are saying the next president should emerge from the Southeast. We just want the system to do unto the Southeast as it has done to the other regions. They have given those concessions to others, why not us? It is painful when a beneficiary of that agreement gets up to say there is no way for an Igbo man to become the next country’s president.

At independence, the three regions were North, West and the East, then later Mid West. The balance of power has always been Hausa/ Fulani, Yoruba and the Igbo. The Igbo are not asking to be given what belongs to another region; all we are asking for is that we are given what belongs to us. The emergence of a president from the Southeast will be feasible if we want it, but from all indications it seems like President Jonathan wants to run again in 2015; and as long as he wants to run again he has the power of incumbency. And from what is going on, it seems Obasanjo wants to support former Vice President Atiku Abubakar. So it will be an interesting battle. The Igbo supported Jonathan 99 percent; they also demanded one other condition that after him the next president must be an Igbo man. So if Jonathan is contesting in 2015, it will put us in a dilemma. Dilemma in the sense that we will be faced with the hard choice of pulling down the man we built up or support him so that when he steps down in 2019 we can contest.

As a legal practitioner, what defects do you see in the 1999 Constitution?

The Constitution has a provision they call right of appeal, grounds of appeal, issue of law, appeal of facts and so on. To me it is absolutely irrelevant. It is nonsense because if a litigant loses at the High Court, he takes the matter to the Court of Appeal and the person over there simply comes out to say that this case has been lost because he did not come by right of appeal, but came by issue of law. The entire Part One of Chapter Seven of the Constitution should be looked at. Appeal shall be supplied in all cases, that distinction is unnecessary because it causes injustice. The movement of adjudication today is moving away from technicality to real justice.

Secondly, if you check the powers of the National Assembly, they do not have the power to make law on health. The only power they have is to make laws for quarantine and laws for health safety in factories.

They should also amend the Constitution to give independence to Local Governments. As it is, local governments are mere appendages of the states. I can tell you authoritatively that there is no local government that is achieving the purpose for which it was created. All they do is wait for the statutory allocation, go to the governors to say ‘how much do you want, how much can we keep?’

Back to Chapter Seven of the Constitution, the mess being made with the appointment and removal of the president of the Court of Appeal and so on should be remedied.

The Constitution is very clear, it does not give the president the power to do such, but for selfish reasons the National Judicial Council (NJC) simply messed itself up by asking President Jonathan to remove Justice Isa Salami. Since then, the Judiciary has never remained the same, they have to take a critical look at the section and make the decision of the NJC to be binding, independent of whoever is in power.

What about the appointment of electoral bodies at the states and federal?

Another critical area that should be amended is the appointment of the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC); it must never be done through the president, it is a mistake. State Independent Electoral Commissions are one of the worst creations I have ever seen. They are neither independent, neither do they go for justice, that is why, if assuming the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governs a state they will win all the council polls, likewise the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN).

The governing party wins all local government polls with the aid of the State Independent Electoral Commission. So I think the power to appoint the electoral umpires should be taken away from the executive at the states and federal level. National Assembly can as well include it in the powers of INEC to conduct local government elections.

What other areas do you think should be looked into?

The power to prosecute terrorism should also be decentralised and make all Nigerians have the power to bring to book whoever that is found wanting to book.

Communities should also be empowered to control their resources. This is to avoid a situation whereby, a community is environmentally degraded due to the presence of mineral resources in the area, yet the residents of the area wallow in abject poverty.

This makes some stranger benefit while the burden is being transferred to their indigenes. The Constitution has to be amended to give control of resources to communities and not to the federal government or the governors of such states.

When we talk about state creation, we must note that amending the constitution is not enough. We must follow the provisions for state creation enshrined in the constitution. State creation is what the Southeast is clamouring for and they should have it. True federalism is what comes after a proper amendment of the Constitution.