Nigeria may go for regionalism as Emeka Anyoku, other patriots mount pressure on Tinubu

 Anyoku urged the president to forward an executive bill to the National Assembly to legislate on a national referendum that would approve the draft constitution.

He said the 109-member constituent assembly should be mandated to produce the draft constitution to be subjected to a referendum.

The referendum, according to Anyoku, will give legitimacy to the new constitution.

“We put some proposals to Mr. President and we urged him to send a president’s executive bill to the National Assembly, a bill that will call for two essential measures.

“One, the convening of a National Constituent Assembly, to be mandated to produce a new draft constitution. We suggested that such a National Constituent Assembly should consist of individuals elected by the people on a non-party basis.

“Say, for example, three individuals per state, per each of the 36 states and one from the Federal Capital Territory and they should be mandated to produce a new draft constitution,” he explained.

Anyaoku premised this proposal on the argument that Nigeria needs a pluralistic constitution to tackle its development challenges.

Citing Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and Sudan, he noted that countries that failed to manage their pluralism through a federal constitution are on course for eventual disintegration.

He said countries such as India and Canada, with pluralistic constitutions, have remained resilient.

The ex-Common Wealth Scribe  said: “Nigeria, we affirmed to Mr. President, is a pluralistic country. And you all know that pluralistic countries exist all over the world.

“Those of them who addressed their pluralism by having true federal constitutions have survived. An example is India and Canada.

“But pluralistic countries that failed to address their basic challenge of pluralism through a federal Constitution have ended up disintegrating. Examples of that are Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and Sudan, here in Africa.”