By Dare Babarinsa
Let me start with a confession. I have not read the manifesto of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC. However, I had expected that one of the new grounds the party would cultivate is the abandon forest of constitutional reforms. So far, it has shied away from this. Indeed, some of the pronouncements of its red-cap chiefs suggest that it is militantly opposed to any form of constitutional amendment.
Let me start with a confession. I have not read the manifesto of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC. However, I had expected that one of the new grounds the party would cultivate is the abandon forest of constitutional reforms. So far, it has shied away from this. Indeed, some of the pronouncements of its red-cap chiefs suggest that it is militantly opposed to any form of constitutional amendment.
*MKO Abiola |
We may recall that President Muhammadu Buhari,
before he was halted by illness, had said on national television that he would
have nothing to do with the reports of the Constitutional Conference brokered
by his pliant predecessor, President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan.
It is not out of point to regard the APC as the
successor-political estate of Chief M.K.O Abiola, the great man whose sacrifice
formed the cornerstone of our struggle against military rule. Indeed when Chief
Olusegun Obasanjo was sworn-in as the elected successor to General Abdulsalami
Abubakar, many of the leaders of the struggle regarded him as an undeserving
beneficiary of Abiola’s great struggle. It is a fact of history nonetheless
that Obasanjo had suffered as much as, if not more, than most of the leadership
of the opposition. It was not surprising therefore that Obasanjo paid scant
attention to the call for the restructuring of the Federation. As President, he
played his game as an advocate of a strong Federal Government. He and members
of the military class, especially those who spent their youths fighting in the
Civil War, are suspicious of the call for constitutional reforms. They fear it
might spiral out of control. I disagree.