National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) has asserted that it will not endorse any election conducted on the basis of the 1999 constitution as every institution and action taken under the document remains an illegality.
A spokesperson for the organisation, Ayo Opadokun, who made this disclosure in a television programme monitored by Africa Today News, New York pointed out that without restructuring, there was no need to hold the 2023 elections and that those who hold the contrary view were pretenders.
‘Anyone saying there must be election in 2023 before we can talk about restructuring is speaking on a false premise and it is the attitude of demagogue dictators to pretend as if elections solves all problems. Election is not the answer to the crisis we have at hand.
‘You are asking us to endorse the false document that was presented to us as a decree in 1999? Every institution under that document remains a false aberration and illegality and we don’t want to have anything to do with that. If you are still under that false belief that they would hold election, and hold us to ransom again, because most of them who will be elected will swear allegiance and we will sit down again and watch idly, it is a false belief and hope. Nigeria will not sit down and watch idly any longer. We are fed up with the false document that was foisted on us.
‘We have been governed by decrees and they do not represent our will. The popular will of the Nigerian people must prevail. What the Nigerian state must do today is to call on ethnic nationalities upon which the country was constructed and say that it is time we come together and ask if we still want to belong to Nigeria. That question has not been asked. The colonialists forced us into co-habitation without our input. It cannot continue. Let anyone who is in power know that Nigerians have suffered enough. We are a failed country.’
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Also responding to the presidential ambition of the national leader of APC, Bola Tinubu, and controversy on whether the presidency should be zoned to the south or the north, Opadokun said NADECO considered such permutations and ambitions of those angling for positions in 2023 as misdirected.
He said what was of concern to NADECO, and what should concern Nigerians, is that the country is returned to federal constitutional governance.
On agitations by separatist groups, the human rights lawyer said: ‘Under the United Nations Human Rights protocol of 1958 and African Charter for Peoples Rights that was set up in Addis Ababa in 1998/99, everyone is entitled to self-determination, and it is a rule that no one has the right to control or dominate the other person. The fact that the current Nigerian president and his minions are pretending that nothing is happening, they need to be reminded that the world has moved on. We cannot be subdued and humiliated. This is an unsustainable state and it cannot continue.’
Many Nigerians have in recent times called for the abolishment of the 1999 constitution of the federal republic of Nigeria for a new people-oriented constitution.
AFRICA TODAY NEWS, NEW YORK