CSO urges Tinubu to convene national conference

The International Society for Social Justice and Human Rights has urged President Bola Tinubu to hold a national conference to write a new Nigerian constitution.

Dr. Jackson Omenazu, the group’s founder and Chancellor, encouraged Tinubu to hold the conference as soon as possible so that implementation could begin.

The then-President, Goodluck Jonathan, inaugurated the 2014 National Conference in Abuja in March 2014, with 492 delegates representing all parts of Nigerian society, including professional organizations.

The conference was convened to reflect on the political and socio-economic challenges confronting the nation and propose a solution in the collective interest of the country.

However, Jonathan failed to implement the Confab report before he lost his re-election bid to Muhammadu Buhari in 2015.

Buhari, on his part, discarded the report.

Speaking in an interview, Omenazu urged Tinubu to convene a national conference, stating that “The current 1999 Constitution, no matter how amended, is a receipt to anarchy.

“We must be honest with ourselves; the confab we are looking at is not the type that was done during Jonathan’s regime, where political actors were just nominated randomly to come for a confab. It was a gathering of the retirees of the political class.

“We are talking about a sovereign national conference where all ethnic nationalities that were criminally amalgamated by the British colonies will select their leaders unhindered.

“The leaders will converge on a place without federal government funding and come up with a constitution that will bind us as a people. The result of such a confab should not be for anybody’s vetting.”

He also emphasized that the disunity among ethnic groups in the country calls for an immediate rewriting of the nation’s constitution.

He said, “The constitution is clearly riddled with defects, and the general mistrust among ethnic groups and between the government and the governed means that it urgently needs to be rewritten. But the process of said rewriting has to be seen to be clear and untainted.”