The Deputy Senate President, DSP Ike Ekweremadu has spoken up about how the immediate past Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation, Mohammed Bello Adoke, misled ex-President, Goodluck Jonathan into withdrawing his assent to the amended 1999 constitution after he had initially assented to it.
Speaking as a guest speaker at the 2015 UNIZIK Faculty of Law Public Lecture, Ekweremadu explained that Adoke frustrated the constitution amendment process because of the National Assembly’s refusal to accede to his request to expunge the amendment seeking to separate the office of the Minister of Justice from that of the Attorney General.
The then Chairman of the Senate Constitution Review Committee, who spoke on the topic: “The politics of constitution review in multi-ethnic societies” blamed embedded ethno-sectional interests and considerations as major stumbling blocks to Nigeria’s quest for a more acceptable constitution.
He regretted that vital amendments, which should have helped to deepen Nigeria’s democratic experience, strengthen equity and justice and grow national development had perished at the altars of mutual suspicion and narrow elite’s interest masqueraded as ethno-sectional interests.
While insisting that whatever scuttled the last constitution amendment process did so based purely on narrow ethno-sectional interest, not on national interest, Ekweremadu said, “It was very reliably gathered that former President Goodluck Jonathan indeed appended his signature to the Alteration Bill presented to him and had, thus assented to the Bill.”
He continued, “the former Attorney General of the Federation who was against assenting to the Bill subsequently persuaded him (Goodluck Jonathan) to veto it. The Presidency wrote to the National Assembly stating clearly that it was returning the Bill, but the Bill did not accompany the letter. This prompted the National Assembly to demand the return of the original Bill sent to the President for assent in light of his alleged veto, but the Presidency refused this request, ostensibly because there would have been no way of covering up the fact of the signing of the original Alteration bill by the President.”
The DSP went on to state that it was time the nation embraced the reality that the South-east deserves an additional state for the sake of equity in the distribution of resources and opportunities.
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