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Nigeria can never be restructured politically, economically, structurally or otherwise under the current General Abdulsalami Abubakar-written and imposed unitary Constitution popularly called “The 1999 Constitution.” Irrespective of who is the President or which political party is in power, the fraudulent Constitution does not have the provisions to restructure Nigeria in whatever guise being proposed. Because the forged document being paraded as a Constitution for over 19 years now was written by an Army General without the consent and input of the citizenry, the entire document is riddled with errors, contradictions, and outright lies such that the best thing is to trash it and allow the citizens to generate a brand-new

Constitution as is the standard practice all over the world.
A Constitution is an agreement by the citizens of a country on how they want to be organized, be governed, be structured, and when to change their government. Restructuring, on the other hand, means changing an existing structure with a view to achieving greater efficiency. From these simple explanations, it is obvious that what is presently called the Nigerian Constitution is nothing but a fraud and the contents of that fraudulent Constitution cannot allow any form of restructuring to take place.

Without any shred of doubt, the proponents of Restructuring are all in common agreement that Nigeria must be restructured “structurally” to produce Regional Autonomy. While they may not be in unison on the number of Regions that will satisfy everyone, it is very clear that the natural fault lines of Nigeria will make the number to default to five Regions namely; Northern Region, Middlebelt Region, South-West Region, South-South Region, and South-East Region. But these Regions were not provided for in the Constitution.

The proponents also want the Regions to control the resources found in their respective Regions and to control the security apparatus, excluding the military (Army, Navy, Air Force). Furthermore, the proponents want the Regions to have the powers to create states or whatever governance structure they deem fit. Again, these are not part of the current fraudulent document called the 1999 Constitution. Several other items listed in Schedule-2(Part-1) of the fraudulent 1999 Constitution are on the shopping list of the proponents of Restructuring.

Unfortunately, all these proposals are against the political and economic interests of the Northern Region in present-day Nigeria. For instance, the Northern Region has the highest number of military-created states when compared with other Regions. Also, they control the security apparatus and are always in the majority, especially at top decision-making levels of the security agencies. In fact, all core military/security institutions and training centers are located in the Northern Region. In addition, they control over 90% of the Oil & Gas mining and production licenses. We should not forget that Section-162 of the fraudulent 1999 Constitution gives them undue advantage when it comes to sharing revenues derived from the sales of Oil & Gas resources which are located in the South-South & South-East Regions.

Ironically, all the proponents of Restructuring are in unison that the proposed Restructuring will be brought to fruition through constitutional amendment of the fraudulent 1999 Constitution. For those who do not know, the fraudulent 1999 Constitution can only be amended by satisfying the conditions stipulated in Section-9. This section states that an item for amendment is deemed successfully amended when it is voted in favour of by 24 out of 36 State Houses of Assembly, 73 out of 109 Senators, and 240 out of 360 members of House of Representatives. Considering that the proposed Restructuring will go against the economic and political interests of the Northern Region and that the Northern Region has the majority in terms of number of States, Senate members and House of Reps members, how then will anyone expect any proposed Restructuring item to be approved through a constitutional amendment?

What then is the solution? The solution is for Nigerians to generate their own brand-new Constitution which will, ab-initio, contain all the wish-lists on Restructuring. But based on the provisions of the current General Abdulsalami Abubakar-written 1999 Constitution, a sitting Government is constitutionally barred from generating a brand-new Constitution. What the 1999 Constitution allows is only amendment. Therefore, the only way to generate a brand-new Constitution is by putting a Transitional Government in place, which will not be bound by the existing 1999 Constitution, hence such Transitional Government will not be barred like that of a sitting Government but rather have unfettered powers and authority to mobilize the citizens to enact, make, and give unto themselves a true and standard citizen-generated Constitution. Without this, it is absolutely impossible to Restructure Nigeria in any way, shape or form under the existing General Abdulsalami Abubakar-written and imposed unitary 1999 Constitution.

For this reason, the march to 2019 general elections must be halted now, even in 2018, and a Transitional Government put in place to oversee the production of a brand-new citizen-agreed & citizen-approved Constitution and elections can continue thereafter.

Written by:
Dr. Clifford Chukwuemeka Iroanya
Houston-Texas, USA
November 22, 201

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