The
Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, has declared
that President Muhammadu Buhari has violated the provisions of the federal
character as contained in Section 14 of the constitution of the Federal
Republic of Nigeria in the appointments the President had made.
Ekweremadu,
who spoke in a lecture at the Nnamdi Azikiwe University on Monday, argued that
Buhari violated that section of the constitution in his initial appointments,
contending that such appointments ought to reflect the diversity of the
country.
He said the appointments “made so far by the current
administration are clearly lop-sided that it left the South-East
totally empty-handed”.
He added, “I think in this country that is just recovering from
a most divisive and bitter fought presidential election in its history; in a
country where vicious civil war had been fought and scars are fresh; in a
country where a presidential election, believed to have been won by (someone
from) a part of the country was annulled; in a country which has
deteriorated from one that citizens held high political and civil service
offices outside their places of origin to one in which they hardly do so any
more; and indeed in a country where there has been consistent outbreaks of
militancy and restiveness by people who believe they have been shortchanged,
maltreated, and, therefore, better off outside the Nigerian commonwealth, I
firmly believe from the depth of my heart and conscience that you do not even
need a soothsayer or compulsion of the constitution to know that you must necessarily
carry every part of the country along.”
In his lecture entitled, ‘The Politics of
Constitution Review in the Multi-Ethnic Society’, organised by the Faculty of
Law, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Ekweremadu said it had become
imperative to review the nation’s constitution on grounds of ambiguity and
failure to make provisions for some critical matters of state.
He noted that difficulties in amending the constitution were
caused by mutual suspicion of the elite as “mutual ethno-sectional and religious
suspicions have become so ingrained in our body polity that even the most
patriotic and altruistic intentions are almost always interpreted from myopic
prisms of such sentiments and interests”.
Nigeria’s former Ambassador to the United States, Prof. George
Obiozor, said it would amount to fallacy for anybody to say that
Nigeria’s unity was not negotiable, noting that Nigeria had failed
to learn the lessons of history.
Obiozor stated, “The reality over the years remains that in
spite of the best efforts of all our leaders past or present, Nigerian unity is
not guaranteed. It is simply at best, an aspiration and not yet an
achievement.”
The ex-envoy advised that if the country would realise its
potential, it must stop “the syndrome of self- delusion about Nigerian
historical exceptionality”.
“Today, if the truth must be told, our diversity has turned into
disorder, and our democracy is an invitation to incremental anarchy,” Obiozor
said.
-Punch
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