| UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA - AFRICAN STUDIES CENTER |
LAGOS, 23 February 1999 (IRIN) - In the tumult leading up to Nigeria's presidential elections on 27 February, one important fact frequently gets overlooked. The country has no constitution, and therefore the powers and responsibilities of the political offices which are avidly being vied for, remain unknown.
The military government of General Abdulsalami Abubakar has said the constitution will be unveiled before the inauguration of democratic rule on 29 May. He has also said that it will not be an entirely new document but will draw heavily on the 1979 constitution, which ushered in Nigeria's last civilian administration.
A spokesman for presidential frontrunner, Olusegun Obasanjo, told IRIN that he is satisfied with the military's assurances. "We just have to have faith that it [the constitution] will not create problems for the new government. I don't think it will deviate so much from the '79 constitution."
Human rights groups are not so sure. In a transition process in which the military has clearly come out in support of Obasanjo's presidency, the missing constitution is regarded as their final trump card. If Obasanjo does not win, then a redrafted constitution could be used to dilute the presidential powers of his rival Olu Falae, they claim.
"I think it's one of the saddest aspects of the current transition programme," director of the Constitutional Rights Project, Clement Nwankwo, told IRIN. "The dangers are the military may end up giving a constitution on the basis of how comfortable they are with the eventual winner of the election."
The mood in Nigeria is also light-years away from the confident and hopeful spirit of 1979. After 15 years of military rule, the demand now is for decentralisation and for the country's regions to play a far more commanding role within the federal system.
"The 1979 constitution is a centralising constitution - it takes a lot of powers away from the regions," writer and media expert Adewale Maja-Pierce says. "It's a military constitution."
At the heart of the problem, he told IRIN, is the issue of control of resources. The federal government has historically responded to calls for greater self-government by balkanising the country into smaller and smaller state units. Currently there are 37 states, few of which are financially self-sufficient, over which the central government wields enormous power.
Demands for greater local control over locally-generated resources have been especially vociferous - and violently repressed - in the underdeveloped oil producing Delta region. "Derivation", or the percentage of locally-produced wealth that is returned to communities by the federal government, has fallen from 45 percent in 1970, to just three percent today, according to Maja-Pierce.
However, the groundswell of support for decentralisation extends beyond the Delta. The call taken up by politicians across the country now is for a restructured Nigeria based on six strong regions rather than the myriad of weak states. Several senior political leaders have gone so far as to demand regional armies to break the political hold of the military establishment.
Nigeria is the world's sixth largest oil producer. An estimated US $250 billion has been earned from oil since the mid-1970s. However, from a medium-developed country, Nigeria has plummeted in the rankings to one of the least developed.
"The decentralisation issue is coming from the fact that military governments have completely mismanaged resources and haven't accounted for the enormous amount of wealth generated, to the detriment of the states and local governments," Nwankwo says. "We need a serious devolution of powers."
[ENDS]
Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1999 14:02:49 +0000 (GMT) From: UN IRIN - West Africa <irin-wa@wa.ocha.unon.org> Subject: NIGERIA: "Missing" constitution sparks concern 1999.2.23
Editor: Ali B. Ali-Dinar
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