Chairman, Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption, Prof. Itse Sagay (SAN), has advised both President Muhammadu Buhari and the National Assembly to drop the 1999 Constitution and adopt the 1963 Republican Constitution after amending it to suit current realities.
According to Prof. Sagay, adopting the 1963 Constitution in this way would end on-going secessionist agitations in the country and save Nigeria from many current crises relating to the centralised running of the nation
Prof. Sagay stated this on Monday evening while featuring on Channels Television’s ‘Politics Today’ programme.
He said: “My own personal preference is that we should scrap this Constitution and adopt the 1963 Republican Constitution. That Constitution contained everything that is being agitated for now. If we had that, if we adopted it, with amendments here and there, to make it accommodate states that we have now rather than region, I think all these agitations will die down and everybody will be happy.”
However, Prof. Sagay said he did not know if President Muhammadu Buhari and the All Progressives Congress (APC) have the political will to restructure the country at all.
His words: “I really don’t know but his party headed by him commissioned the (Kaduna State Governor, Nasir) El-Nasir Committee to work on the issue of federalism and they have came out with an excellent document and all we need to do is to implement them. And if they are to be implemented as I said, it will be probably be implemented in a totally new constitution instead of trying to amend the existing one.”
“I am personally disappointed that that excellent document is being allowed to gather dust and I think the leaders of the party should now bring it out and go to the President and say, we should now make a move to implement what we ourselves commissioned and have approved because that is what the whole country wants now.
“What we have now is a unitary constitution parading itself as a federal constitution,” he stressed, adding that Nigeria needs a clear departure from the existing document.”
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