The traditional ruler of Daffo in Bokkos Local Government Area of Plateau State, Da Joseph Sunday Akuns, has said that only a return to the 1963 republican constitution can pave the way for a safe review of Nigeria’s constitution in a democratic way.
The royal father noted that although various schools of thought have emerged to volunteer ideas on how the National Assembly should approach its latest plan to further review the 1999 constitution, a return to the 1963 constitution offers the most feasible strategy in the present circumstances.
According to Akuns, “It is revealing and indeed interesting that while NINAS is calling for a fresh start, Prof. Akins Fapohunda insists on the annexure of decree 24 of 1999, just as the NCEF urges a repeal of four junta decrees to pave the way for the lifting of the suspension of 1963 republican CFRN for amendment with contemporary realities.
“Although the Patriots maintain that the 2014 Confab report cum draft Constitution seems muted, I tend to stand with the NCEF, because the 1963 constitution was never abrogated, but suspended and amending same will help to birth American style federation with some modifications.”
Akuns, who is also a former executive in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), further noted that since the 1963 Republican Constitution was not abrogated, all the House of Representatives needed to do was to amend it to preserve Nigeria’s democratic and structural foundation.
“Ethnic cohorts held a constitutional conference in Lagos on 25-26 July 1963 and mandated elected Members of the House of Representatives to enact the Republican Constitution with effect from January 10, 1963.
“The enthroned autochthonous 1963 CFRN was never abrogated by military juntas, but simply suspended. Therefore, we need to carefully stitch the democratic strands of Nigeria by reviewing the autochthonous 1963 CFRN.”
The traditional ruler argued that Nigeria’s governing eras of 1966 to 1999 missed or messed with the opportunity to have called for the needed amendment of the 1963 constitution in order to restore the democratic foundations of the federal structure.
“As a result, the Federal Republic of Nigeria (FRN) suffered a prolonged period of an interregnum that stifled and stunted the maturity of the tenets of republican governance in Nigeria. India is a global classic of republicanism in the nationhood strides of countries that also emerged by colonial creation,” he said.
On reports that President Ahmad Bola Tinubu was to receive a draft for an executive bill to shift to regional governance, Akuns remarked that what Prof. Fapohunda seems to be doing amounts to flying a kite.
He stressed that when Prof. Fapohunda noted on national television that Nigeria must toe the path adopted by South Africa in 1990 to extricate itself from the limitations placed by the Apartheid constitution, it broached the idea of recourse to constitutional force majeure.
Akuns said: “The 1999 Constitution was not enacted by a constitutionally recognized process but by the promulgation of a decree by a military interregnum. This negates the assertion of “We the People” in the preamble of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
“Every constitution or statute defines the method by which it shall be altered. Obviously, the novelty of the 1979 cum 1999 Constitutions is worn out and has thrust forth both documents as grafts and offshoots that are lacking democratic-republican attributes of sovereignty.
“To bypass the method of altering a sovereign legal code is tangent to the republican attributes of such a code and particularly so when it is done by the elected members of parliament that are part of a governing administration of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
“The republican choices of Nigerians via partisan electoral processes are the legitimate body corporate such as the 10th House of Representatives of the NASS (National Assembly) that is vested with the powers to alter a sovereign legal code such as the constitution.
“This is the natural process to convey the consent of the constituent autochthones of the ethnic territories from which Nigeria was created as a single territorial entity bounded by the 1963 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. In this regard, the 1999 document titled the CFRN isn’t the right focus for a constitutional amendment exercise due to its un-republican origins.
“It is the 1963 CFRN that holds the republican ace for a review because it was enacted by the representatives of, We the People, as Honourable Members of the Federal Parliament that emerged from a partisan electoral process of 1959 elections.”
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