Kaduna Conference on the 1995 Draft Constitution

Welcome address by Usman Bugaje at  Kaduna Conference on
the 1995 Draft Constitution,at Arewa House Conference Hall,
Kaduna, 9th to 10th October 1998.

Protocol It gives me great pleasure to welcome all of you here to the first conference on the 1995 constitution. Only a little over four months ago, no one would have believed that it will be possible to be here today breathing such freedom and discussing the long awaited but much hoarded 1995 draft constitution. Indeed, it is a little over a year when some of'  us, under Network for Justice, a human rights organization, were chased away by the police, using tear‑gas, from this premises for attempting to hold a lecture on the politics of human rights in Nigeria. These were the days when greed and self‑succession was the main business or governments, for which only God knows how much of the scarce national resources went down the drain. Many who joined the ill‑fated ship of greed and ambition have, since the wreckage, swam ashore and are now enjoying the very freedom and tolerance they did not want to grant others. Well, such, they say is life, indeed life, as Shakespeare would say, is time's fool. Better still, as God, the giver and taker of life would say, "the life of this world is but an illusion”, if only we realize! The Vision Trust Foundation, VTF, is an NGO, based here in Kaduna, which seeks to enhance our appreciation of the future and improve the quality of leadership in our society through education. Three months ago, barely a month into this new dispensation, we realized the necessity to revisit the 1995 constitution to provide a genuine and more enduring basis for proper democracy. We were therefore encouraged and pleased when the federal government decided to allow it free public debate on the constitution with a view to collating these inputs, distilling them and infusing them into what is at best a dummy, to produce a basis for the transition to a proper democracy. The 1995 constitution, like the government which produced it, is easily the worst the country has had since independence. Never in our history have we had a constitution so blatantly contrived to promote the selfish interest of one man at the expense of the whole nation. From the process which procured the members of the constituent assembly through the manner the assembly's business was conducted to the way the document was compiled, every step and every breath appear to have been contrived to secure the self-succession of one man whose ambition knew no bounds. This plot was aided and abetted by an ethnically tense atmosphere, apparently deliberately, created and sustained to blindfold members and engage their attention and energy elsewhere. So when members were busy raising their voices and undoing each other, one man, operating through proxies, was undoing them all. None apparently, realized that the greatest beneficiary of all these was in fact their real enemy. Many of the unique provisions of this rather peculiar draft bear the stamps of this ethnic suspicion, presidential manipulation and were the exploits of the ethnic war that was fought on the floor of the assembly. Can we hope that we have now learnt some lessons and should be able to see the real beneficiary of the raging ethnic cold war? Or are we still unwilling to see the dangers of this folly? If after four decades we are still unwilling to take the first step in nation building, when is it all going to begin? This is neither the time nor the place to answer these questions; we have to leave them in the competent hands of our scholars and politicians who will be presenting papers in subsequent sessions. But perhaps we need to stress the point that one thread that seems to run through our problems of nation building is our ethnic, cultural and religious differences. These differences are not only natural, but, like the diversity in nature itself, it is harmless and in fact beneficial. Our failure to appreciate this diversity provided the Achilles heel and our enemies have always relied upon this ethnic suspicion to keep us weak and divided. The military regimes only made matters worse by regimenting a heterogeneous society into a unitary order, their training did not allow them to think and behave otherwise. This, as we have all witnessed, not only eroded and eventually destroyed the federal arrangement that our founding fathers had the sagacity and foresight to found the polity, but, even worse, it so distorted our psyche that we seem unable to distinguish between unity and uniformity. Any attack on uniformity is automatically interpreted to be an attack on unity as unity, having been brought down to such frivolous level, is only deemed to be achieved when female graduate from Akwa lbom and another from Katsina look the same in their NYSC uniform. Must Unity be at the expense of their cultural differences? Must we all be uniform to be deemed united? Can we erase these cultural differences through such regimentation? Is it necessary? Has our experience been encouraging? True federation renders all these questions unnecessary and allows us to proceed with the business of growth, development and progress as other nations. Constitution making is never an easy exercise nor is it a static one, like the society it serves, it has to be dynamic and imaginative. Having been initiated by colonial governments and carried out under their tutelage our Constitution making does not appear to recover from the prejudices of the European world‑view and Culture. There is an otherwise incomprehensible rush to borrow foreign models and institutions, developed and nurtured in a milieu with a different history, culture and world view. Our constitution makers proudly speaks of American models, French models and until recently, the Soviet model, but never seem to ask for our pre-colonial models, which have been developed, tried and nurtured in our history, culture and worldview. True, many are ignorant of their own history and the kind of education and orientation they received has made them to look outward rather than inward, believing that they have nothing in their past worth their attention. Many of us will recall the political bureau of the late eighties, it was a measure of the vision of our elite who proposed the Soviet model that the whole Soviet edifice collapsed only two years after their proposal. Even when the disharmony between the imported alien models and the values of the socio-cultural environment is glaring, our educated elite, in whose minds our constitution are conceived, would rather capitulate than risk being labeled parochial. One can only hope that we have seen enough and  suffered enough to wise up and summon the courage to be  ourselves for once. We ought to use this opportunity to reconcile our political, legal, economic, social and educational institutions with our cultures and world‑views. For only then can these make meaning in our minds, find place in our hearts and deserve our protection with all our might. You must be saying that these are too familiar concerns, to warrant taking your precious time. Perhaps. They have certainly been said in several ways, at several times by several people but with hardly anything to show for it. Why repeat them then, you must be asking. They are repeated here precisely in order to raise the question as to why have we continued to be oblivious of this fundamental issue. It is the feeling of some of us that the failure has to do more with a problem of communication than with the validity of the points. We have been talking to each other but that does not necessarily mean we have been communicating, it shouldn’t be difficult to see the difference between talking and communication. Advertising agencies are one of the best communicators, but even these experts could get it wrong when they ignore a local context. A story is told of one such advert agent. (Narrate Story). It looks like we may need to explore more ingenious ways of communicating with each other. Looking at the Programme you may have realized that we have tried to be a little liberal and flexible. We do not pretend to cover all that is there to be covered in this two day conference. Rather by providing the opportunity for people to come together we hope to stimulate thoughts, share ideas and ginger people up for subsequent contributions at other fora and through media. We have also tried to allow for as much time as we possible could for discussion, realizing that in these days of fuel shortage, power cuts and politicking that often goes into the late hours of the night, not everyone would be able to produce a paper. The last session would be a panel discussion which will hopefully provide an opportunity to raise issues not raised in the structured sessions. We have also sought to bring academicians, constitutional lawyers, politicians and the people at grass roots who eventually bear the brunt of any constitution. It is our hope that discussions will be free, fair and above all frank. We perhaps hardly need to add that at the end of the day, a good constitution alone does not in itself guarantee good governance. The quality of the men and women to operate it is also important. Unfortunately the quality of character is not the kind of thing that can be done through constitutions or even military fiat. We have to return to the painstaking and gradual process of education, both formal and informal, mundane and spiritual, at home as well as outside the home. With the benefit of hindsight we can see how much the absence of moral conscience can cost the nation. Going by the fortunes so far recovered, one can only hope that we realize this early enough to avert a repeat of some of the misfortunes we have gone through. Conclusion Our conference is unfettered, it will neither seek conformity nor will it be impressed by one, so people should feel free to speak their minds. One needs hardly say, however that people contributing would be expected to say what they want to say with decorum and sense of responsibility. Once again I wish to welcome you all, thank you for listening and wish all of us God’s blessings.