By Abdulrazaq Magaji

Here we go again! Over the past several weeks, some members of the Federal House of Representatives have been drumming support for a return to parliamentary system of government. In the Senate, a committee has been set up to tinker with the presidential system in a way that will make it, in the opinion of its promoters, responsive and people-oriented. While we pray that the exercises do not turn out to be another jamboree, it is important to point that Nigeria can have a cost-effective yet very effective constitution devoid of any razzmatazz.

In the absence of a widely-accepted alternative, it is best to stick to the word, restructuring, that much-abused word in our political lexicon which some see as the cure-all deodorant to freshen Nigeria’s miasmic socioeconomic and political milieux. It is interesting to note that restructuring was not the word used when the late Head of State, General Sani Abacha, convoked the National Constitutional Conference in 1994. But, from the outcome of deliberations, it is safe to say General Abacha was, consciously or unconsciously, on course to consign the hot air of restructuring to the trashcan of Nigeria’s political history.

Reference here is to the draft report of the 1994/1995 Constitutional Conference, a hybrid of the parliamentary and presidential systems, which contained some revolutionary proclamations which, in a manner of speaking, would have given Nigerians something close to a ‘people’s constitution. It is barely surprising that General Abdulsalami Abubakar, who succeeded General Abacha, considered it expedient to shred any document that had the tag of his predecessor on it. How sad!

Without any doubt, General Abacha who was nudged into snatching power by the same people who turned round to become his implacable adversaries was a divisive leader. When, therefore, he died after holding the country together for five impossible years, survival instincts compelled his stop-gap successor to disown him as a convenient way of healing wounds and, more importantly, wooing the aggrieved, predominantly Yoruba Southwest geopolitical zone, back into the fold. The strategy worked and the Constitution Review Committee that was set up to explore the way forward performed what appeared then as the easiest national assignment.

Conscious of the seeming national emergency at hand, members of the Justice Niki Tobi-led Constitution Review Committee hastily threw out the Report of Confab ’94 after curiously labelling it the ‘product of a disputed legitimacy’. In its place, the Niki Tobi Committee members performed a cheap and hasty plastic surgery on the 1979 Constitution which they claimed ‘had been tried and tested’ Essentially, in the haste to bury the ghost of General Abacha, a cheap ‘Tokunbo’ Constitution was foisted on Nigerians in 1999.

Still, all is not lost. If the six geopolitical zones inherited from General Abacha have served Nigeria well, we can swallow our pride and retrace our steps to 1994 with a view to adopting other provisions of the Constitutional Conference that provide answers to some of our pressing national questions. The way they are constituted, the six geopolitical zones were envisaged to be the building blocks for the stillborn 1995 draft Constitution which made provision for six principal offices of five-year single-term duration to rotate among the six geopolitical zones. The offices outlined in the Report are those of president, vice president, senate president, house speaker as well as the positions of prime minister and deputy prime minister.

What has come to be known as the ‘Abacha Document’ has something for everybody. Had death not taken General Abacha off the stage in 1998, each of the six geo-political zones would, by this year, have produced a president for the country. In other words, had political exigencies not influencedGeneral Abubakar to throw away the baby with the bathwater, by now, Nigeria would have experimented with the Abacha formula for twenty-six of the ‘30-year transition period’ after which merit and competence would have replaced rotation in determining who gets what. The 30-year transition was to ‘promote national cohesion and integration’ and give each geopolitical zone a sense of belonging.

As envisaged by the document, at no point in time would any of the six geo-political zones had cause to complain of marginalization since there was always going to be one ‘juicy’ office to be vied for every five years. What this means is that, by this year, Nigeria would have been on the last lap of the 30-year transition period as each of the six geopolitical zones would have produced a president, a vice president, prime minister, deputy prime minister, president of the Senate and speaker of the House of Representatives. This unique provision eliminates the incumbency factor and its attendant abuses. A document that provides practical solutions to the hot air of marginalization and the wrongheaded agitation for breakup should not be gathering dust.

Twenty-six years since throwing away the baby with the bathwater, Nigerians should have overgrown their disdain, misplaced or otherwise, for General Abacha. It is interesting to note that, more Nigerians who now concede, either publicly or in private, that General Abacha was not the black-faced devil he was made to look, are alluding to the uniqueness of the report of Confab ‘94. In the midst of the ongoing debate on devolution of powers, Nigerians can only hope and pray that President Bola Tinubu will pause to reflect on the struggles of the defunct National Democratic Coalition, NADECO, set aside his grievances, if any, with the Abacha administration, take another look at the report of Confab ‘94 and set the nation on the path of true greatness.

Revisiting the Abacha Document may not be sweet music to the ear but, going forward, it is a good and inevitable starting point. It’s all about Nigeria, after all.

•Magaji <magaji778@gmail.com> writes from Abuja