TITLE:
Nigeria—The Search for Autochthonous Constitution
AUTHORS:
Emmanuel Ibiam Amah
KEYWORDS:
Autochthonous Constitution, Constitution-Making Process, Military Governance, Nigeria
JOURNAL NAME:
Beijing Law Review,
Vol.8 No.1,
March
31,
2017
ABSTRACT: The issue of a Sovereign National Conference has always been a burning issue in the Nigerian media and in the public discourse. The arguments of former Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Ebele Jonathan as well as former members of the National Assembly as to why a Sovereign National Conference is not attainable in the present democratic Nigeria are far from reality. This work x-rays the history of Nigerian constitutions making and the resultant consequence of her inability to evolve an autochthonous Constitution. It argues that the power of the sovereign people of Nigeria to make a Constitution by themselves through a constituent assembly elected for the purpose, subject to a referendum by the people could not have been taken away by the provisions in the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria for parliamentary constitutional amendments. It opines that the mandate given to the President and the Legislators to amend the Constitution is a limited mandate and is not meant to substitute the people as the repository of constituent power; it concludes that only an autochthonous constitution can salvage the country from her present political, ethnic and economic quagmire.
