A Professor of Strategy and Development, Prof Anthony Kila, has said constitutional amendments are not enough to set Nigeria on the path of mutually shared peace and progress.
Kila, who was a guest on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme on Tuesday, said Nigeria needs a people constitution to replace the 1999 Constitution (as amended). He described as “faulty”, the present constitution put together by the military over 25 years ago.
“We are in a situation in Nigeria in particular where minor inputs are not enough but globally because of the times we live in, you need quick and intense intervention to obtain anything,” he said.
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Kila, a member of The Patriots, a group of eminent Nigerians led by former Commonwealth Secretary-General Chief Emeka Anyaoku who recently met with President Bola Tinubu to push the agenda for a people’s constitution, was named the chairman of the group’s advocacy committee for the actualisation of people’s constitution.
He said, “The constitution starts by saying, ‘We, the people’. It’s not true; those three words are false. The constitution as it stands today is false, faulty and needs to be redone.”
Kila said the rules of engagement for a people’s constitution were not obeyed in the process of the current Nigerian constitution.
He said the constitution didn’t go through a referendum and didn’t embrace the country’s diversity. “The new constitution that The Patriots want will not suppress that,” he said.
“At the moment in Nigeria, what we try to do is to force people to be what they are not. I believe that Nigeria is a union of nations and there is nothing wrong with that,” he said.
He also clarified that The Patriots is facilitating the process for a new constitution for the country through broad public engagement and not writing one.
