Mr. Ayo Opadotun who is the Secretary General of pro-democracy group, National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), has called on President Bola Tinubu to invite leaders of the various ethnic nationalities in Nigeria to produce a draft constitution that will spell out how the heterogenous people in the country will agree to live together.
“President Bola Tinubu who was part of us in the trenches has no other business than to restore Nigeria to constitutional governance,” Opadotun said on Inside Sources with Laolu Akande, a programme aired on Channels Television on Friday which was monitored by Africa Today News, New York.
“More to it, he has an added advantage being that his party, in its manifesto, Article 7 of APC manifesto enjoins them to restore Nigeria to federal constitutional governance.”
The NADECO chieftain said Nigeria cannot continue to be governed by the 1999 Constitution which he claimed was imposed by the military.
Opadotun said Nigeria has not achieved much since the return to democratic governance in May 1999. He blamed the military for the stunted growth of the country because they “imposed their own” upon Nigerians when they retreated to the barracks 25 years ago.
“By that subversion, the military stunted our growth, arrested our growth and reduced us to nothing.
He said, “What we regard as the Article of Faith called the Federal Constitution was abrogated in January 1966 and substituted with decree that sectionalised and unitarised Nigeria till today and because of that, Nigeria has not been able to find its place
“This so-called 25 years, who are the prime movers and shakers of the country? Because we succeeded in pushing the military back to the barracks, they imposed upon us, their former commander in chief in the person of General (Olusegun) Obasanjo.
He claimed Obasanjo did not promote democracy during his eight-year administration from 1999 to 2007. “When the man in Zamfara started Sharia, we told Obasanjo that the law should not permit that but he said it was a political Sharia. 12 states in the north took after him (the then Zamfara governor). What is the resultant consequences today? We have two laws in the country?” he queried.
Opadotun urged the President to urgently convoke a national conference to produce a draft constitution.
“When the British came, they related with the ethnic nationalities. President Tinubu should call the ethnic nationalities and their leaders and let us sit together with the 1963 Constitution and any other document that might be relevant.
“Having produced a worthwhile draft constitution, he can then send as an executive bill, that is what I will suggest.”
The NADECO chieftain threw his weight behind the growing call for Nigeria to dump the presidential system for parliamentary democracy, saying it fits Nigeria’s peculiar need.