…Berates Tinubu-led Exercise
Former Deputy National Chairman of the People Democratic Party, PDP, Chief Olabode George has said that the public hearing on the ongoing constitution review, held in Lagos, under the chairmanship of Senator Oluremi Tinubu, was nothing short of a charade.
George said this in an open letter to the Senate President, Ahmed Lawan and made available to journalists, describing the exercise as one “without any inkling of democratic seriousness, totally devoid of nay sense of fairness, indifferent to the equitable pursuit of justice.”
Quiting from Nigria’s first Prime Minister, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, who once said that the that the ‘Nigerian democracy should be an ethnic commonwealth which should give each constituent a fair place under its umbrella even if they have lost at the polls,’ George said that succinct wisdom in the words of Balewa, uttered over 60 years ago “is the very pivot of the present agitation for a more equitable union.”
The Atona Oodua of Yorubaland however added that “the present shadow boxing in the name of the constitution review will not meet Balewa’s standard.”
He averred that when the Senate Constitutional Review Committee berthed in Lagos last week, “it was wrong footed ab initio. There was nothing genuine or sincere about the mode of presentation. There was no attempt to widen the pool of contributions or give the public hearing any semblance of popular input.”
Berating the chairperson of the Lagos hearing, Senator Remi Tinubu, the former military governor of old Ondo State said, “Senator Tinubu was overbearing, uppity, vain, even truculent in her engagement with contributors.
“Many people were deliberately denied the openness of democratic contributions. The hearing was stage-managed, anchored in prejudice, and framed in puppeteering identification.
“Alternative views were cast aside, flung into the pits. This is not right. This is not just.
“It is obvious that the Committee is not interested in true and thorough representation of the will of the Nigerian people. It appears to be working with a script towards a predetermined end. The contributions were narrow, overtly partisan, one-sided, lacking in plural contributory logic.”
Insisting that “this is not acceptable to the Nigerian people,” George averred that the structures of the present constitution is not only so biased, but it is so flawed and so mangled with inequities that a mere review will not be sufficient to correct all the glaring wrongs afflicting the Nigerian state.
He added, “The unanimous position of the Nigerian people is the total overhaul of the present constitution. Nothing else will do. A genuine juncture of remedy will be to revisit the report of the 2014 Constitutional Conference which has been generally applauded for the sweeping breadth of its equity and democratic balance in rectifying the prejudicial and unworkable structures that are on the ground now.”
George insisted that as a stakeholder in the Nigerian project and someone sworn to the unity of the Nigerian state, he believes that “our nation can emerge stronger and better, only when all the component units that make up our nation have a sense of belongingness and general accommodation, regardless of tribe or sectarian belief; when everyone is treated equally without ethnic bias, when merit is the sole determinant of public positions. This can only be achieved with a people’s constitution. This is indeed what we should work for, rather than the charade and the present jamboree that is chaired by Senator Ovie Omo – Agege.”
The Atona Oodua of Yorubaland cautioned that enough of this false and misleading engagement, demanding that we should “renew our nation through the pursuit of the truth and the resolve on the fairness doctrine. Their-in resides the national salvation.”
He concluded by once again quoting the late Balewa, saying, “If crook’s are allowed to determine the destiny of the people, the people will suffer indefinitely.”
