Falana, Balarabe Musa Blame Obasanjo For Nigeria’s Problems

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Temidayo Akinsuyi, Lagos

Human rights activist, Femi Falana
(SAN), and Balarabe Musa, elder statesman and former governor of Kaduna
State, on Tuesday, said former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s rejection
of the Minority Report of the Constitutional Drafting Committee of 1976,
co-authored by Drs. Segun Osoba and Yusufu Bala Usman, is one of the
major reasons Nigeria is facing multiple crises today.

The late Bala Usman was the father of Hadiza Bala-Usman, the Managing Director of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA).

Both
men and others spoke at the public presentation of the Minority Report
and Draft Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (1976) at the
University of Lagos auditorium on Tuesday.

The event had in
attendance dignitaries such as Comrade Hassan Sunmonu, former President
of Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC); Oba of Lagos, Rilwan Akiolu; Dr.
Abubakar Siddique Mohammed, Executive Director of the Centre for
Democratic Development Research and Training (CEDDERT), and Omoba Tunde
Ajibulu, a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

Going
down memory lane, Falana, who was the book reviewer, said majority of
the problems being experienced in Nigeria today such as the raging
insecurity, kidnappings, youth unemployment would have been addressed if
the minority report had been adopted.

Falana, who said the
military government headed by Obasanjo rejected the report in a hostile
manner, added that “Nigeria could possibly have avoided the current
obstacles to genuine democracy and sustainable human development if some
of the questions posed and the answers provided by Osoba and Usman, two
leading lights of the Nigerian left, in their unambiguously progressive
Report and Draft of 1976 had been considered”.

He continued: “As
part of the initial steps towards the transition to civil rule in 1975,
the regime of General Murtala Mohammed gave a committee of 49 eminent
Nigerians the job of producing a draft constitution for the Second
Republic, which was scheduled to begin on October 1, 1979.

“Two
members of the Constitution Drafting Committee (CDC) fundamentally
disagreed on ideological grounds with the report supported by the
majority of 47 others.

“On the question of human progress, the
philosophical divergence between the minority and the majority within
the CDC was too wide to expect a compromise. Hence, the minority came up
with the document under review today.

“By the time the report
was ready, Murtala had been killed in an abortive coup and his
second-in-command, General Olusegun Obasanjo, was now in charge.

“Regrettably,
the Obasanjo regime rejected, in a most hostile manner, the Minority
Report, as it is now known in Nigeria’s political history.

“The
report of the majority was decreed into the 1979 constitution, the basic
content of which has formed the nucleus of the subsequent constitutions
including the Decree 24 of 1999, otherwise called the 1999
constitution.

“Let us quickly dispense with the regrets, as the
actual spirit of this occasion is to engender hope about the future of
Nigeria.

“A critical reading of the publication being presented
today would bring to the fore the radical diagnosis and the
extraordinary prescience in the prescriptions for the Nigerian condition
made by the authors.

“This is despite the fact that the authors,
Dr. Olusegun Osoba and Dr. Yusufu Bala Usman, both radical historians,
wrote 43 years ago that they never pretended to put forward ‘a perfect
document’.

“In the true tradition of self-criticism that is the
hallmark of leftist thinkers, they readily admitted ‘faults and
inadequacies’ in the document.”

Falana also said the Minority
Report was pro-masses as it addressed majority of the challenges being
faced by the average Nigerian as well as accountability by public
officials.

“Other similarly remarkable provisions encapsulated in
the draft, but were regrettably rejected by the Obasanjo regime,
include those on accountability by those in power; the purpose and
management of political parties, as well as the appointment of a prime
minister by the elected president for the purpose of diffusing power.

“In
fact, given the progressive ferments of the 1970s, these two
progressive constitution writers could not have imagined the current
crisis of the economy, society and politics,” he said.

On his
part, Balarabe Musa, who asked Obasanjo to apologise to Nigerians for
rejecting the report, said the situation of the country would have
improved tremendously while leaders would be accountable to the people
if Obasanjo had not rejected the report.

He said: “The Minority
Report historically can be regarded to have arisen out of the
experiences of the Nigerian Elements Progressive Union (NEPU) of the
British colonial administration and the First Republic of Nigeria, the
Nigerian workers organisations, students unions, Academic Staff Unions
of Universities (ASUU), civil society organisations, etc.

“The
experiences of the NEPU and the authors of the Minority Report also
influenced the PRP’s five basic principles of value and the equality of
human beings, the power of the people, socialism, genuine federalism,
and total liberation from imperialism.

“Obasanjo was wrong to
have rejected the minority report. If he had not done so, things would
have been better for this country today.

“The minority report saw
what will happen if it is rejected and since that report has been
rejected, we have seen what has happened in the state of affairs of the
nation today. I put the blame squarely on Obasanjo.”

On his part,
84-year-old Osoba said a recurring lie by the ruling class is the
concept of restructuring. He said many of the advocates of restructuring
and creation of states are just people looking for personal gains.

Speaking further, he said the only way for Nigeria to get out of her present predicament is to overthrow the existing order.

He argued that continued struggle and not restructuring would save Nigeria.

Source:- Independentng

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