Restructuring Vs. Secession

The Right to Self Determination is one of the cardinal principles of the Universal Declarations of Human Rights 1948, as adopted by the United Nations, as well as The African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights, ratified by Nigeria in 1990,.

Thus, it is hypocritical for Section 2 of the 1999 Constitution to declare that the Nigerian Federation is indissoluble. True, under the Principle of Federalism, secession is usually denied. Yet, having subscribed to binding treaties which hold the right to self determination and freedom from alien domination inviolable, its pathetic inconsistency to deny same through municipal law.

The question that arises, is the desirability of secession in the Nigerian context.
Is secession inevitable for the political, economic , social and general wellbeing of the nationalities within Nigeria? That is a matter which is open to debate.

To my mind, secession is a lazy way out of a crisis which is open to many options. The various Constitutions enacted by the Military regimes including 1979,1989 and 1999 are no doubt, autochthonous, but gravely flawed.

The military enacted the constitutions after their image and likeness. The unification decree which transformed Nigeria from a true Federal nation to a unitary state by the first Military Government was merely to suit the command and control structure of the military.

The age long principles of Federalism which were the product of extensive and far reaching consultative and constitutional conferences, traceable from 1914, through the 1940s 1950s particularly the lead- up to the 1954 constitution and particularly to the 1963 Constitution were eroded by military fiat.

Nigeria is still suffering from the military induced quasi-federalism, which reduced the power and areas of competence of the various components of the Federation.

The constitution vests exclusive legislative and executive competence over the entire content of part 1 of the second schedule thereof on the central government. The constitution also gives the central government dominance and superiority in respect of masters listed in Part 2 of the second schedule.

The nature, scope and spheres of Federal government operations in Nigeria is different from true federalism as practiced by other Nations of the world, and in particular, it is a far cry from the true intentions of the various indigenous peoples Nigeria as envisaged by the by the various constitutional conferences not superintended by the military.

From the failure of the present quasi federalism and the strong agitation for regional resource management, the lesson to be learnt is that ” no- go- areas” in constitutional conferences lead to artificial consensus. It leads to suppressed resentments for the outcome .
Now, we have to restructure to realise the full potentials of the constituent units of the federation.
On restructuring I stand !

Ewere Odiase Esq. is an Asaba based legal practitioner, Human Rights activist and principal partner of Odiase Lawyers Consulting, Asaba, Delta State