Our present constitution gives no room for the negotiation of Nigeria’s union Elder statesman, Chief Mike Ahamba has said that Nigeria is not negotiable. Speaking with VINCENT KALU, the Senior Advocate of Nigeria and former Second Republic lawmaker, stressed that the country was living in a breach of agreement, even as he emphasized the urgent need to set up a Constituent Assembly for a new constitution.

There are agitations in the South, while in the North-East, there is Boko Haram; in the North-West, there is banditry in the North Central, there are killings by herdsmen.  What gave rise to all these?

It is bad rulership and bad reactions to bad rulership.

How do you mean?

When a government is doing badly, those they are ruling should not aggravate the badness of their rule by also doing wrong things. That is what is holding Nigeria down today. What people don’t realise is that everybody does not know everything about everything. People express opinions they can’t sustain legally. It is unfortunate that we have come to a situation where we think that the only way to remedy a bad thing is to do a bad thing.

Then how do you remedy a bad thing?

By doing the good thing the right way. If a government is working against the rule of law, you fight them with the rule of law, not by aggravating and giving them the chance to do worse thing and by also going against the rule of law yourself.

You can only stop it by doing the right thing. Look at how Governor Wike has started restructuring by taking a firm step in respect of the value-added tax (VAT). Others are now following him. After all, what are we talking about? Is it not let people have their thing and give some to the Federal Government, instead of the Federal Government taking away the efforts of people and giving them a little or nothing? Imagine a situation where a state will make more than N2 million VAT and get about N2 million from Federal Government and another state makes N16 billion and it is given only N4 million. How can there be peace in that type of situation.

So, Wike has now looked at the law and he is right that those things should be taken by the state and pay to the Federal Government what is due them.

In fact, that was how we agreed to start Nigeria in the first place, but because some people, when they are given political position, which is favouring them, they forget the basic things that they should stand up for. Restructuring has so many ways; anything we can do to remedy this country without going into war or killing people is a best option. War is taken rarely as a very last option and I don’t fight in any circumstance, except it is defence. When you come to attack me, I run inside my place and fight you back.

We must do things the way we agreed to them when we agreed to live together. This country is living in breach of its agreement. The agreement of our elders and our colonial masters as to how we are going live in this country was changed by the military. If there was a conflict, we go to court and settle it and that is why the courts are there.

In that situation, no one should intimidate the Judiciary. Look at what they did to Justice Mary Odili. It is sad. They have done the one they did before that led to the sack of the former Chief Justice of Nigeria. This time around, what offence has this woman committed? If she has committed any offence, there is a procedure to follow. Why send army, policemen or whatever they are? They were armed to hound the house of a woman, a justice of the Supreme Court? Where can this happen? We must stand up and insist that unit from which those uniform men came must be identified. It is not enough for the Attorney General to sit in his office to say he doesn’t know anything about it. It is sad. Let them investigate and find out which unit produced those armed persons. They came from a unit or did they just dress up and got there? If they did there is great danger; danger for me, danger for you, danger for the Attorney General and danger for everybody that some people can dress up in uniform, carry guns and go and surround a high official like a Supreme Court justice. If there are privileged people who should be respected, it is the Supreme Court justices of any country. It is unfortunate the way we are degenerating to this type of situation, and we think it is enough to say we don’t know about it; if you didn’t know about it, it is worse. If you knew about it, all that is required is to say, ‘I’m sorry, I made a mistake’. It is an easy situation to handle than to say, ‘I don’t know about it’, which is dangerous to the entire nation.

We must know allow it to happen again, the people who went to Justice Mary Odili’s house must be identified, and they must say why they went there. We have had unknown soldiers, unknown gunmen and now, unknown government men. I’m aware that before any uniform man takes a gun from the armoury, he signs the gun off and when he comes back he signs it in. Who gave the guns and if they don’t belong to any unit at all, then we are all in danger.

Let us not come to what happened in South America in the 50s and 60s,which forced every family to have its own army to defend members of their family. Let us not allow ourselves to degenerate to that because it is only a tree that sees a caterpillar and remains in place, and the citizens of the country are not trees.

As the agitations rage, there is this statement that Nigeria is not negotiable, its sanctity remains. What is your stand on this?

That statement came into our constitution, when we had a Constituent Assembly. That was when we lost our federation. My book that is coming out very soon will reveal all those things. It was then that we lost our federation to a unitary federation we have now.  So long as the constitution says this country remains indissoluble, any group of persons who sits down to negotiate the country is doing that unconstitutionally, which means somebody nullifying and opposing what they have done.

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The only way to negotiate Nigeria is at a Constituent Assembly under a law made by the National Assembly. They should know their responsibilities. You don’t only wait for the president to initiate a bill in the House. No matter how you feel about it, this is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Uncomfortable as it is to me, I have the duty to tell Nigerians the truth.

But, Ambassador Babagana Kingibe, at The Sun Awards three weeks ago, said Nigeria is negotiable, just like a husband and wife can renegotiate their marriage to know if they can continue to live together?

Unity is negotiable, but union is not negotiable under our constitution. Kingibe knows it cannot be negotiated. Some people tend to say what they feel the larger population will like; they don’t want to tell the people the truth. But for me, I have a different attitude to life. I will say it as it is and nobody has stood up to counter me on any issue. Let somebody tell me that Section1.3 does not exist in our constitution. It is only at a Constituent Assembly that it could be negotiated. I was a member of the 2014 Confab, where we passed over 600 resolutions. You cannot bring over 600 resolutions and expect the government to implement them; it doesn’t happen that way, especially when the government has just a few months to an election. So they left and the next government doesn’t care about what the previous government did. It is the usual thing in Nigeria’s change of baton; a new government comes in and it behaves as if there was nothing he met. Government is a continuum, it starts from where the previous stopped, and that is how it is in civilized world. People see us as civilized but we continue to present ourselves as uncivilized, which is sad.

The National Assembly should debate a new constitution; set up a Constituent Assembly to debate a new constitution because they don’t have the power of amendment. I keep saying it, one day, the court will pronounce on it. They have the power of alteration, but not amendment. There is a difference between amendment and alteration. The constitution in Section 9 says the National Assembly can alter provisions of the constitution, it doesn’t say the constitution. So, alteration is limited to the specific provisions that may need to be altered.

If majority thinks that the constitution is a fraud, why don’t we change it? Why should a nation continue operating with a fraud? Why do we still keep on accepting offices under it and you do not have the will to get a new constitution that is not a fraud. That innate selfishness is in us. If it favours you, it is okay; if it does not favour you, it is not okay. If something is not right, it is not right. We need a Constituent Assembly and we need a law to that effect, which they can make. The National Assembly should explore the extent of the provisions to make law for the peace, order and good governance of Nigeria, and relate it to part 2 of the constitution. The people are supreme and who represents them? It is the National Assembly. The Presidency is not the representative of the people. Those who represent the people are in the parliament.

Can it be realizable? We have seen that the North is opposed to restructuring, but they are in the majority in the NASS…

Where is the North? Can you please define the zones in that that region?

North West, North East and North Central    

Is the North Central very much in that group now? Let those who believe in it get there. I don’t think anybody is complaining more than the Middle Belt and part of the North-East if what I read in the newspapers is true. Everybody has some complaints. Lets stop dividing this country on some parochial and self-conceit modules. It is wrong, let us get the issue there and if they vote against it then we know it is gone. I know in Canada, they have been voting whether there should be the Republic of Quebec; the last time it failed by a little above one per cent votes. When it failed everybody knew it had failed and continued with the country. One day it would come again. Scotland is almost gone in the United Kingdom, peacefully. Why is it that when you want to achieve a thing and if it is not in our own time, we think it cannot be achieved? Why can’t you do a thing to the benefit of your children and grand children and not to your own benefit? This is one of the problems we have with some of our politicians. You want a state because you want to be a governor, not because your people need a state. Let somebody, even an individual, bring a bill on that Constituent Assembly thing and let see how many people in the House will oppose it. If you say the North will not support when you have not tried, it means you have conceded seniority to them. You go in there, even if you lose, you go again until people become reasonable. The answer is not arms.

Your party, PDP held a convention last week and the office of the National Chairman went to the North Central Zone. But people from the North are still jostling for the presidency. What is your view on this?

Zoning is not in the party constitution, but they have been zoning things in their mental ability to consider justice. What makes you think that they would not continue this principle now, because one or two recalcitrant elements are not in agreement? Have you seen where there has been 100 per cent agreement on a political issue? So, when the time comes, good sense of justice and equity will make the majority take a decision that will sustain lives in the place and not to sit back and say, they will not agree. If you say they will not agree, then you have made them to be in charge. I don’t accept that anybody is in charge of Nigeria. Lets go there at the centre and fight it out peacefully. He who tries is likely to succeed, and he who does not try has already failed. If you have failed, why complain?

There is this Nnamdi Kanu issue. Does it require legal or political solution?

There is an aspect that is legal and there is an aspect that is political. If the authorities feel that an offence has been committed, it is a legal option, because I wouldn’t like a situation where because of present circumstances, those who have no power to interfere with judicial process begin to interfere; because once things start the wrong way, it will continue.

If they say, he has committed treason lets hear the evidence. If he is convicted, then the president can exercise his discretion and grant him pardon. The president should not interfere with judicial proceeding. I will not accept that under any circumstance because I know what it portends in the future. We always create more problems in trying to solve one. If we now have a situation where the president begins to interfere in judicial proceedings, all of us will shout.         

If the attorney general office says he has a case against Nnamdi Kanu, lets see the evidence. If he is not guilty let the judge be courageous enough to set him free, but if he is guilty let the court convict him and then the president can step in politically and grant him pardon that is the solution to the problem.