Tony Nnadi,
First published 04 April 2018
In The Union Dispute Declared on December 16, 2020, by the Nigerian Indigenous Nationalities Alliance For Self-Determination (NINAS), The First Fundamental Issue To Be Resolved Is “How Nigeria Is Composed” (Constituted), Before The Question Of “How Nigeria Is Governed”
(The article below was written on April 4, 2018, in a Forum where someone who for years did not understand what the Lower Niger Congress (LNC) trenchant opposition to the 1999 Constitution was all about and who erroneously described that opposition as “the unceasing obsession about the 1999 Constitution”, suddenly grasped the grouse of the LNC and therefore declared that everything wrong with Nigeria, flowed from the 1999 Constitution and that there can be no meaningful remediation of the Nigerian situation without our first getting rid of the 1999 Constitution).
Here is the original article of April 4, 2018, and my response to the fellow:
“The offending 1999 Constitution is first about “How Nigeria is Composed” before “How Nigeria is Governed”. The matter is much larger than that. The offending Constitution is first about “How Nigeria is Composed” (i.e. Constituted), before “How Nigeria is Governed”.
While welcoming him to the side of the Cause-Effect-Driven intervention design, let me reinforce what he already wrote about the Fundamentally Flawed Constitution that dictates “the way Nigeria is Governed”.
It is a Two-Documents-In-One Package, just like the Memorandum and Articles of Association of a Company.
The MEMORANDUM is a completely, different Document from the ARTICLES OF ASSOCIATION, though they are always bound together as one Volume. The latter has no life or existence of its own outside the former. The Memorandum creates the Company and is where you see the Individual Promoters/Prospective Shareholders A, B, and C come together to declare their Intentions/Goals/Objectives and expressly Commit to forming themselves into a Company to be called XYZ Ltd.
Then, as the Co-Owners/Shareholders of the now-existing XYZ Ltd, they proceed by way of another Document called the Articles of Association to spell out in some detail the Terms that will Regulate their dealings as Co-Owners of XYZ Ltd.
It is because there is XYZ Ltd, as created by the Memorandum, that the requirement to spell out the Terms regulating the dealings amongst A, B, and C in the XYZ Ltd venture arises and is, therefore, captured in their Articles of Association.
What a Memo and Articles is to a Company is what a Constitution is, to a Country.
In the case of a Country like Nigeria, when you read the Preamble to the 1999 Constitution declaring that:
(A) “We the People of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Having Firmly and Solemnly Resolved to Live Together in Unity as One Indivisible and Indissoluble Nation…”
(B) “Do Hereby Make, Enact and Give to Ourselves the Following Constitution.”
The first part, i.e. (A) is the Agreement of We the Igbo, We the Yoruba, We the Tiv, We the Ijaw, etc., as consenting Promoters, to form ourselves into one Political Union (Enterprise/Venture) called “Nigeria”. This creates the Entity and the Enterprise, “Nigeria”.
The second part i.e. (B), is the Collectively Agreed Terms of Federating, which are detailed and encapsulated in a Document called the “Constitution”.
The Government of a Country (its Three Arms) is exactly in the same position as the Hired Management Team of a Company, recruited and/or changed every four years by a process called “Elections” (the Elected individuals appoint the rest of the large Team, including the Judicial Arm).
Those like the LNC who insist that the National Assembly has no business in making or remaking the Constitution are simply pointing out the indisputable FACT that it is not the hired Management Team of a Public Company that makes or remakes the Memorandum and Articles of that Company.
What happened to Nigeria between 1966 and 1999 was the Management Team of Enterprise Nigeria was forcefully toppled, jettisoned, and unilaterally replaced by imposition, the Memo and Articles of the Enterprise, in subjugation and supplantation of the owners of the Enterprise, being the Constituent Component Regions of Nigeria, as Federated by the Agreed 1960/1963 Constitutions.
Those who, despite the loud protestations of the authentic but now dislodged, dispossessed, and defrauded owners of the Nigerian Enterprise, are bent on railroading us to a “Restructuring” in which an arm of the rogue Management Team (i.e. Legislative arm of Government), will exclusively decide, over our heads, as if Sovereignty is with them, both the (A) Being in Union, and (B) the terms of that long-dead enterprise, Nigeria, even as the authentic owners desperately seek a retrieval of their hijacked Enterprise, are simply siding with the rogue usurper enemy, against the Peoples of Nigeria in circumstances that amount to Treason against the Constituent Peoples of Nigeria.
The contention of the dislodged owners of Nigeria (Constituent Peoples) is that if we cannot restore the agreed basis of the Being in Union and then the terms of the failed Union, then the pretense of being Federated by the Consensual Agreement of “We the People” must be halted, forthwith while each Constituent Component Bloc works out its future.
The reason for this long clarification is to bring it home to us that the problem Nigeria must resolve now is not limited to “the Way Nigeria is Governed”. It includes the more Fundamental Question of “the Way Nigeria is Composed”, which goes to the issue of the very being in any union between the self-evidently entrapped Constituent Components of Nigeria.
The Restructurists, whether they know it/intend it or not, are solidly on the opposite side of the Self-Determinists.
The Caliphate’s response to this contention has been an Ethnic Cleansing to Conquer and Colonize the entire Territory of “Nigeria” having lost out hopelessly in the battle to preserve the Caliphate-imposed definition of Nigeria (the 1999 Constitution).
Those still discussing another round of National Elections (in 2019) based on the obnoxious, repudiated, and rejected 1999 Constitution are aiding criminality to the extent that the winner of any such Election will swear to and govern with the fraudulent 1999 Constitution neither is there wisdom in ignoring the Ethnic Cleansing Campaign sweeping towards Southern Nigeria.
Tony Nnadi
LNC
April 4, 2018
Nigeria Has No Constitution To Amend As The People Never Made Any. Olanipekun SAN