On Saturday, November 10, Kano’s political atmosphere was notstalgic.
Known for its alertness in the pros and cons of politics and politicking in the country, it was not a surprise that the House of Representatives public hearing on Constitution Review in the ancient commercial city rather took an audacious dimention. Through out the nooks and crannies of Kano, papers were flying at designated centres for the public hearing, and in one swoop a strong voice, the Kano people kicked against state creation, state police and rotational presidency.
In this interview with a select group of media men, Hon. Alhassan Ado Doguwa, representing Tudun Wada/Doguwa Federal Constituency in the House of Representatives explained why the North cannot agree to state creation, state police and rotational presidency during the Constitution Review. He also played up the politics of number, insisting that Kano state being the most populous state in the country deserves more than it is getting from the federal allocation, while lambasting the South-South for boasting with oil. The Representative of Pointblanknews.com was there at his Sharada residence within Kano metropolis when he insisted that so long as the elected National Assembly remains in place, there will be no need for convocation of Sovereign National Conference.
What informed the decision of the leadership of the House of Representatives to organize a public hearing for the Constitution Review at the level of federal constituencies?
You see, like we keep on saying, for me it is an unprecedented opportunity given to the people at the various constituencies, for the first time by the National Assembly. The Constitution has vested in us, the National Assembly members, to do whatever it takes to review the Constitution; and it is something that we can, at will, decided to do it at the way we were doing, going by the provisions of the Constitution and the Conventions of the constitution review. But if you could remember, right from the day one when the leadership of the National Assembly was inaugurated and sworn-in, you will understand that we have a very special legislative agenda”that we will always consider ourselves as the people’s Assembly. That is, the House of the Nigerian people the House of Representatives of the Nigerian people. This has been the leading agenda of the seventh Assembly of the House of Representatives.
If you by the leadership style of our Speaker, the Rt. Hon. Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, we have always been trying to do whatever we are doing in the most transparent and open manner, and that is why we have collectively decided to take to the door step of our people the constitution review exercise. For the first time, we have given Nigerians open opportunity” the market women can come and contribute their own opinion, make presentations. The youths can come, the students, the aged, the physically challenged; we have given this opportunity to welcome all sorts of opinion. We have given this opportunity to the people on the streets”it is right there in their door steps, for them to come and make their own contributions. In fact, it is unprecedented and the National Assembly can beat its chest for what it has achieved so far. We are proud that for the first time in the history of the National Assembly is extending its own constitutional right back to the people. And I want to you that the commitment and responsibility of each and every one of the 360 members of the House of Representatives is to make sure that the result of the exercise is sacrosanct. We will stand on that no matter whose ox is gourd.
But Kano state already has a committee to look into this constitutional review and there are feelings from some quarters that Kano state government has already taken a stand on the constitutional review. How do you reconcile this with the just concluded public hearing exercise on the same issue?
You see, Kano state has not high-jacked this process. I can even speak on behalf of Kano state government, and I believe that setting up an advisory committee as it was done by Kano state government is not something new”other states can do the same thing. What we have in Kano state is called Constitutional Review Advisory Committee which makes Kano state government a mere stakeholder in the Constitution Review exercise. The has not been disposed to high-jack an exercise made for the National Assembly, what the governor did was to set up an Advisory Committee mandated to look at the gray areas in the Constitution, then advance and propel their own position and present to the relevant committees as a memoranda. When we went to a courtesy call to the Governor, he made it clear that Kano state Government had earlier set up an Advisory Committee. An Advisory Committee, for me, is a stakeholder committee, a committee that hold stake in whatever we are doing as far as the review of the constitution is concerned. A committee that is only interested in the exercise of the review of Nigerian constitution, it has no more other power than submitting what they think the representatives of Kano in the House of Representatives can propel at the floor of the National Assembly. That notwithstanding, I want to confirm to you that the position or report we are likely to generate from our different constituencies remains supreme over any other report or submissions.
Just as you pointed out that ordinarily, the National Assembly has the constitutional powers to review the constitution without recourse to public hearing. There are feelings from some quarters that this whole exercise of public hearing is a jamboree. What do you have to say on this?
You see, in most cases, you the Press would always want to be pessimistic.
You need to look this issue as a new idea, encourage us doing new things.
We are embarking on this project to make sure that the process of the Constitution Review Committee is as transparent as possible. The Press should not always look at it pessimistically”look at it as a new initiative; a new invention by a vibrant National Assembly that is led by the people’s elected leadership. We can never engage Nigerians in a jamboree. The leader we have in the House of Representatives is a leader we are proud of. He is a man that has the interest of Nigerians at heart.
I want to confirm to you that Aminu Waziri Tambuwal with the 359 other members of the House of Representatives cannot take Nigerians for a ride.
We are doing this with all sense of commitment, we are doing this with all sincerity and we stand by the position of the Nigerian people.
Some people feel that this public hearing is part of the designs to cushion the agitation for the convocation of a Sovereign National Conference. Does the exercise have any link with that?
No, it doesn’t have any link. This is a democracy; we are running a democratic Nigeria. In this democracy, everybody knows that the Constitution does not provide any room for a National Conference so long as the National Assembly is fully in place. The moment you have an elected Assembly, that has the mandate of the people, then you have no reason to convoke a National Conference. There is no room for that, there is no window for that and we are not doing this to cushion any agitation whatsoever. Our Constitution is one and we all respect as our only guiding document and guiding legal principle; so for no reason anybody will take it for granted. So, I want to confirm to you that we are doing this in exercise of our constitutional responsibility to provide a room for the review of the constitution, at least once in a session; it is provided for in the Constitution. So we have the power to attempt to review the Constitution, at least, once in the life of a session. And we are carrying out this responsibility based in the exercise of the provisions of the Constitution and not to cushion any agitation. Nobody can intimidate the National Assembly in the first place. If you want state created, you should find out how you can agitate for state creation; if you want the revenue sharing formula to be reviewed, go to the Constitution, it will tell you how you can go about it. There is no room for a National Conference because we have a duly elected, constituted and inaugurated National Assembly. We are all governed by this same Constitution and we are all Nigerians. Nobody can intimidate the National Assembly. What we are doing, like I have said, is to bring for the first time, a window that will make all Nigerians contribute to the review of our supreme document, which is the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. We are doing this to enlarge that sense of representation. What we are doing is to rob minds with the people in our constituencies so as to come up with a Constitution that would be acceptable to all.
Are you saying in a nutshell that the seventh National Assembly can never give room for a Sovereign National Conference if the need eventually arises in this dispensation?
That is not what I am saying. What I said is that the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as it is today, there is no provision for a Sovereign National Conference as long as we have elected National Assembly. The National Assembly is a law-making body; the National Assembly is the summary of the Nigerian population. The 360 members of the House of Representatives and the 109 members of the Senate are the summary of the Nigerian people.
And the sovereignty belongs to the people; and the people have summarized themselves in two chambers of the National Assembly. So, you talk of a Sovereign National Conference for an emerging state, a state under transition, a state that has not fully taken off in its entire ramification as far as democracy is concerned. But in a state like Nigeria where democracy is in full force, the Constitution is entrenched, every aspect of democracy is reflected in the system, then you cannot begin to dream of a Sovereign National Conference. A National Conference, whether sovereign or whatever does not have a place in Nigeria as it is today, as far as democracy is concerned. The Constitution says sovereignty belongs to the people, and the people now is the National Assembly; so, whatever the people wants, each and every Nigerian has a representative in the House and in the Senate.
How are you convinced that the proposed Constitution Review will address the problem for which Sovereign National Conference is being proposed?
You see, I am convinced because, like I said, we have given room for people to come in; with this wider participation, I believe the Constitution will be more people-oriented. There will be inputs from the common people. And I want to tell you that all the Honourable members of the House are very serious on carrying back to the floor of the raw opinion and views of the people. As long as we keep to this, we are coming up with the amendment of a Constitution that will reflect the very mind of the people. We are committed to produce a Constitution Nigerians can be proud” the people’s Constitution.
In your opinion, what is wrong with the current Constitution we are operating?
In the first place right from the principles, right from the principles of setting up the current Constitution, it started from the hands of the military. Anything military must certainly have a lot of defects. The 1999 Constitution being a product of the military in itself is defected. It is in itself undemocratic because it was a Constitution produced by a component of the society that was not democratically elected. So, this in itself is enough to defeat the intendment of the Constitution. You can also agree with me that the process through which the Constitution was produced was rushed. When the military were trying to hand over power in a rush, they also rushed the Constitution, so many considerations were not done; so many issues were left gray, and these are the gray areas that we feel should be reviewed and go round the world over, it is in the convention of every Constitution, no matter how perfectly designed that Constitution may be, it has made provisions within it that I can be reviewed. The supreme document of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is the Constitution; and in that same Constitution, the Constitution itself says that I can also be reviewed, because of the exigencies of time, because of issues that has to do with development; in fact, there are a lot of things that if you go down into it (1999 Constitution) and compare with the modern day democracy” they are almost aberrations.
Why did it take so much a long time to review the constitution after almost 13 years since the 1999 Constitution was put in place?
What I am telling you is that it is enshrined in the Constitution that under this democratic setting, that in every life tenure or session of the National Assembly, that the Constitution must be subjected to a review.
There is nothing wrong with what we are doing now. It is entirely our Constitutional right to review the Constitution. Remember that there was an attempt to review the Constitution in the last dispensation; there was another attempt during Mantu era the Deputy Senate president and chairman of the Constitution Review Committee. There were so many attempts before now. What I am saying is that it is like a tradition, it is a convention which is entailed in the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria”that the National Assembly is mandated to look again and review the Constitution once in the life time of every dispensation. Like I said, we are just exercising the constitutional provision made by the Constitution itself. If today we do not find anything worthy of review, then we tell Nigerians that the Constitution is too fresh and perfect.
May be, you want to ask me the gray areas in the current Constitution, that is, the areas that attract attention; of course you know them”one is the revenue sharing formula. This is something that is creating a lot of contention. The revenue sharing formula that does not take into cognizance, the population volume of every state in terms of sharing the revenue, this is a defective means of sharing the nation’s revenue. I want to believe that if you are in a polygamous family, that is, if you are married to two three wives, one of your wives has four kids and the other one has just one kid, and they are all your genuine wives (like in Islam), then you now have eight pieces of cake to share to your two wives, how would you come back to your house and divide these eight cakes equally to your wives? So, we are talking of equity. The Nigerian revenue, just like it is being generated in Nigeria’s land and across the divide, then certainly when it comes to the sharing of that money; it has to be made equitable. It must have to be equity and not equal sharing.
Look at, for instance, the way and manner the senatorial districts are designed, it is also epileptic, and it is also deceptive. We are talking about democracy, and democracy is about number. Every democratic set up in the world is always emphasizing on the issue of number.
Look at the America for instance, there are states they call swing states; they call them swing states, not because they are finer than other states, it is because of the volume of people they have in them, the kind of votes they produce during election. Population is always an important parameter in every developing and developed nation. And any country that does not take into consideration, the volume of its population in the course of the implementation of its policies; then certainly, that country will not get it right. So, we are agitating, we want to agitate and we want to put it across board that this part of the country is not comfortable with the revenue sharing formula; the North is not comfortable with so many other issues that were made for administrative convenience. There is no gainsaying the fact that, with the arrangement we have today, the issue of population is pushed to the background.
You cannot convince me that a state like Delta, that has less than four million people is to produce three senators, while my own state (Kano) that has approximately 12 million people will produce the same number of senators! This is wrong. And if we really want to continue to live as one and united nation, certainly, we must have to tell ourselves the truth, but it appears that some sections of the country (I don’t want to call names, I am a federal legislature. I am proud of Abia, I am proud of Lagos, I am proud of Cross River, just like I am proud of Kano. And I will always stand to the issue of indivisibility of Nigerian nation) has a hidden agenda.  But I want to tell you that under every federating circumstance, if we do not tell ourselves the truth, if we don’t consider ourselves as brothers and sisters that federation will not succeed. Whether you like it or not, Nigeria has been made, it has been amalgamated in such a manner that nobody will even have the way to divide it. Nigeria will remain indivisible; but the idea is that we must have to accept the fact that whatever is good for goose is also good for gander. It is like some section of the country is now trying to intimidate the North, simply because we don’t control of the political power. So they feel they now have the political power in their hand and they can intimidate every other section of the country to make sure that they get whatever they want. We will never continue to operate under a situation where a section of the country would want Nigeria to only continue in their terms. We can   only continue in a collective terms; nobody will come and spell out just on his own how Nigeria will continue or governed.
After all, they are talking of oil; before oil came in, there were so many other factors, there were so many other economic parameters which Nigeria depended on to survive. Oil did not just spring out of nowhere. Nigeria resources were used to explore oil, where did those resources came from?
And when Nigeria was relying on 85 per cent of the agricultural base, nobody was fuming; everybody believed that agricultural resources were for Nigeria and Nigerians. The cocoa in the West was Nigerian resources, the groundnut pyramid we had here was Nigerian resources, the palm produce we had in the North central part of the country ”we all used all these resources to develop Nigeria. Yes, we discovered oil; and nobody should look at oil to be his own special property. And this oil you are talking about is something that can even be found in the desert, they have discovered oil in Niger Republic, they have also discovered oil somewhere in Borno state. So who knows, someday, there could be oil in Doguwa Local Government, there could be oil Tudun Wada Local Government. Look at the level of development around the globe, a lot of inventions are coming up through technology and other diverse natural resources. There will come a day when oil will no longer be an issue in the world. We have this issue of solar energy and other technological advancement that are fast coming up.
At the end of the day, they will provide veritable alternative to this almighty oil. I think my sisters and brothers in the South-South where oil is now should not be deceived or carried away; they should have to believe that oil is Nigeria’s property, and who ever has oil should not believe that he can take Nigeria to ransom.
Look at the 13 per cent derivative which was given to them at the expense of so many other states; but these people are still agitating that they should be given 20 per cent—20 per cent from where? We will not accept that. And the basis on which we are going to accept any ground to create states—it also has to reflect the issue of population. You cannot continue to divide small states where there are no people—they say give us more states, more states for what? That cannot be a basis. If you are talking of the volume of people we have in the North-West alone, it is almost, three times to the volume of people we have in the South-South. In fact, the kind of population we have in Kano alone is almost the same population they have in the whole South-South, and they are agitating for more states.
Now, look at, also this issue of trying to incorporate the geo-political zones into the Constitution, what for? This is a federal system of government. We operate a system of government that make up of federating states. I have never seen any experience, any place in the world over where zones are created and they are captured into the Constitution of that country when you have federating states. We have countries like the Federal Republic of Brazil, we have countries like the United States of America who are operating this same kind of Federal System—have you ever had the USA considering any creation of a zone and that zone was captured in the Constitution? Let me sound it clear that these so called geo-political zones are not even political creation; they were created by whoever created them to provide administrative convenience; that is to make people feel you are from this zone and he is from this zone. They wanted to use it as a parameter for every other thing that will come to be said in terms of their selfish administrative agenda. It is also undemocratic for anyone to dream that we will now use geo-political zones to rotate the presidency. What for?
This comes to another point. We went round the state during the public hearing exercise; we discovered that there were overwhelming opposition to the state police proposal and rotational presidency. We want you to highlight more on this?
You see, as from today (Saturday, November 10) when my session was concluded in my constituency, I will always speak the mind of my people. I may have a personal opinion, but since I have the mandate of my people and my people through this public hearing, through these memoranda, told me their own position, and whenever I have anything to do with these very issues at stake, I will project the views of my own people. The views of the people in my constituency through the memoranda is that they are against the creation of state police; and even before the public hearing, I was also against the creation of state police because that at the end of the day, it will only create confusion. Governments in the states will take advantage of it and create anarchy; and at the end of the day, if for any reason one governor goes and another one come in, certainly, that police outfit would be disengaged. So, the opinion of my people is against the state police.
The other one you are talking about is rotational presidency. Rotational presidency is undemocratic. There is no basis for any rotation in the presidency because we Nigerians are a united family. Let us continue in the sincerity of our co-existence. We should continue to improve in the commitment of our co-existence. Let us believe that we are all brothers and sisters. The more we agree on that, and then we have less differences.
If we continue to count on our differences, certainly, it will weaken our federation, it will always weaken our commitment and patriotism to our dear country. So, talking about rotational presidency, it is like we are expressing a kind of cynicism, a kind of insincerity to our co-existence as a country. Whoever continues to let any outcry about rotation, it is like he feels neglected, he feels sidelined. I want to believe that in a democracy, nobody should feel sidelined or neglected.
But can political parties adopt the rotational formula?
Yes. Political parties can adopt whatever formula they deem right to present their candidates for election. Nobody will be disturbed. But rotational presidency should not be a constitutional matter, because at the moment you make it a component of the Constitution, it is like you are tying the hands of democracy.
Do you foresee a possible gang-up in this whole exercise of constitution review, since you have already projected the sentiments of the North, don’t you think others from the other divide will also have their own sentiments?
Yes, I foresee that there could be certain sectional or regional gang-up; but at the end of the day, the truth is always one. Certainly, we will all be operating from the point of sentiment. The North will operate from the point of sentiment—and even within the North, there could be some divisions, they will have their own sentiments too, whether religious or otherwise. The South also will be faced by the same circumstances. But at the end of the day if you look at my face, you are an Igbo man, I am a Hausa man and the other person is a Yoruba man, there is something that we must have to agree that this one must be commonly accepted by us.
Everybody could start from the point of sentiment; everybody could start from the point of chauvinism. But it doesn’t matter; I want to believe in the same usual Nigerian manner, we will meet at the same point.
Why we wait to see how this work, what is your appeal?
My appeal is for people to have the interest of the nation at heart, no matter where you come from or your religious affiliation, take it into you and have that conviction that Nigeria is better united than divided, that everyone should entrench the sense of nationalism and patriotism. Everyone should see himself as his brother’s keeper; and the moment we have this orientation, I want to believe that we can succeed at the end of the day.
It has been in this manner all along, even during the First Republic, all this kind of thins were there, but at the end of the day the Sardauna ( Sir Ahmadu Bello) will agree, Chief Obafemi Awolowo will come and agree, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe will come and agree, and Nigeria will continue. So, my appeal is for Nigerians to always preserve the unity of the country. Let us not subject ourselves to the insinuations of foreign opinions and agenda. I am seeing a lot of interventions even with the agitations that are going on now, I can see some foreign influence filtering in to incite some sections of the country; and at the end of the day whatever foreign interest you allow to make impact in your side, you will be at the losing end. Let us look at ourselves as primarily brothers and sisters. To me I have that conviction that if we continue this way, especially, in the House of Representatives, that understanding will be forged; that compromise will be achieved because despite our sentiments at various points, there are certain things we must always look at, and we will see them and accept them as points of unity; we will see them as issues that has to do with reality as against our dreams and our auspicious agenda.