Earlier this year, the Patriot, a group of respected elder statesmen in Nigeria organised a colloquium in honour of eminent constitutional lawyer, Prof. Ben Nwabueze, who passed on few months ago. On that occasion they made an express call for a new federal constitution for Nigeria. They renewed that call on a visit to President Bola Tinubu few days ago. There are those who erroneously believe that a new constitution is not what Nigeria needs at this point in her history. How wrong they are! The reality is that the governance and fiscal arrangements entrenched in the 1999 constitution are indeed at the very heart of the dysfunctional economy, as well as the corrupt and ineffective leadership currently plaguing the country. To divorce constitutionalism from governance is to advertently or inadvertently foist on a country a recipe for disaster. A country that is genuinely desirous of growth must first pay special attention to its constitutional architecture. If the architectural de...
Can the President of Nigeria Intervene in the Internal Politics of a Constituent State of the Federation? - Dr Wole Kunuji
Questions have been raised as to whether the intervention of the Nigerian President in certain matters connected with the internal politics of Rivers State in the last quarter of 2023 was constitutional? The principal argument of those who reject and decry the said intervention is that Nigeria being a federal country with supposed independence and autonomy of the federating States, the President has no constitutional authority whatsoever to intervene in or interfere with the internal politics of any of the said federating States. In essence, the protagonists of this argument harp on the federal character of the Nigerian State as the main plank of their argument for the exclusion of any presidential intervention in the political debacle in Rivers State. It seems to me that those who argue this way are either unfamiliar with or deliberately ignorant of Nigeria’s recent political history and the nature of her federal democratic system. A Brief Overview of the Facts The Rivers S...