WRITTEN BY HUMPHREY NSOFOR
The over 40 million Igbo people resident in Nigeria and elsewhere, represented by Ohaneze Ndigbo and the South East Governors Forum, are, today, May 21,
commanding global attention as they take a stand on how Nigeria can achieve a more perfect union and consequently regain its manifest destiny. The gathering is being hosted by Governor Willie Obiano of Anambra State, whom former Senate President, Ken Nnamani, rightly describes as the Star of the East.
No one doubts that Nigeria, as currently configured, needs a better design. In other words, the call for Nigeria’s rebirth is popular and patriotic. All of us desire – and are deserving of – a better Nigeria. In the wise language of the late Vice President Alex Ekwueme, Nigeria is a miracle waiting to happen.
The reason for the global interest in the Igbo position on what is popularly known as restructuring is not difficult to discern. Of all the component groups which make up Nigeria’s federation, the Igbo people have in the last few decades developed the most robust and realistic vision to make Nigeria a stable, peaceful, just and productive political entity.
There was a nationwide conference to decide the country’s constitution in 1994. Ndigbo sent a solid team. It was there that they decided that Nigeria’s 30 states were unwieldy and, indeed, cost centres. The conference also resolved that Nigeria should not have more than six federating units. This was how the country’s current six geopolitical zones came about. Dr Ekwueme, who led the Igbo delegation, successfully marketed his great expertise and intelligence which changed Nigeria’s history for the better.
Ndigbo also called for the presidency to rotate from one geopolitical zone to another. The Igbo also called for only one term of five or six years for the president and even for state governors. In addition, the Igbo campaigned for a substantial increase in the derivation principle in national resource sharing from a mere three per cent to thirteen per cent. The only major issue on which the Igbo took a stand at both the Mkpoko Igbo Conference and the Constitutional Conference but not accepted at the latter conference was the need for six vice presidents from the six geopolitical zones, including the zone from where the president came. In the event of the president resigning or dying or impeached, the vice president from his zone would complete what remained of the term. Otherwise, the president’s zone would feel cheated.
It took President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s death and the consequent political upheaval for the nation to observe the foresight and wisdom for the argument for each geopolitical zone to produce a vice president at any point in time. As things stand today in Nigeria, a serving president cannot fail a reelection, however poorly he or she may have governed, without his or her zone feeling outrageously cheated. The nation has to address this issue sooner than later.
The major constitutional issues facing Nigeria have long been identified by Ndigbo who have so provided original and imaginative solutions to them. The Igbo summit holding in Awka today to examine Nigeria’s future has to revisit these issues, most of which were incorporated in the 1995 Constitution. It is a pity that some groups compelled General Abubakar Abdulsalami to jettison this innovative constitution and bring back the 1979 Constitution simply because it was produced under General Abacha whom they resented. It was case of throwing away both the bad water and the baby.
It is self-evident that the 1994 Constitutional Conference gave Ndigbo an opportunity to demonstrate, once again, their world-famous ingenuity. The Igbo Summit in Awka provides yet another opportunity to display great foresight in proffering solutions to Nigeria’s myriad problems which have prevented the nation over the decades from taking its rightful place in the comity of nations.
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