Countrywide Rejection Of The 1999 Constitution As Basis Of Nigeria; Options And Processes For Reconstruction: Confederation Or Independent Units – Lower Niger Congress
The Editor, 04 September 2022
Material reproduced here is from Lower Niger Congress (LNC) and was first published on 30th November 2012
Editor’s comments:
A beautifully long read! This document of November 2012 from the Lower Niger Congress remains applicable today, and is extremely pertinent now, when presidential candidates from the South are hoping that National Elections in 2023 will take place. This document is a must read for PVC Warriors, and especially for the followers of one of them, very popular in the NINAS Territory (South and Middle Belt) who keeps on changing his position. From saying that Nigeria is a vehicle with a knocked engine so no driver can make any difference, he now says he is that driver who can drive an inert vehicle. From saying the “Constitution is not what is keeping us where we are today. It is bad leadership. Notwithstanding the constitution, you can drag everybody along”, he now says that once he is voted in, “The review of the Constitution will be part of the overall restructuring Nigerians desire. It will entail legislative, executive and judicial actions. Ultimately the Nigerian people will decide.”
Nice-sounding words, but after reading this clearly written LNC-NINAS document, it becomes very apparent that what this presidential candidate proposes is what will keep the Sovereignty of indigenous Ethnic Nations hijacked, and without their inalienable right to Self-Determination. Before making the same mistakes of 2015 when there were promises of “Restructuring”, including even written in Manifestos, those hoping for “change!” should ask (many many) questions after reading this document.
INTRODUCTION:
As various national groups prepare for the inevitable constitutional reconstruction of the distressed Nigerian Union, the LOWER NIGER CONGRESS, (a platform by which willing peoples of the Ethnic Nations of the old Eastern Region and the old Mid-Western Region, seek to federate themselves into a cohesive, values-driven, systems-based political bloc, under a new social-contract regime engendering a society of equal opportunities), wishes to restate its position on the vexed question of the basis of Nigeria and the future of its divergent peoples.
The goal of this communication is to dissect and illuminate the core issues of the obfuscated debate on that vexed question, with a view to distilling the options available to all parties, thus providing insight into the choice already being made by the peoples of the Lower Niger including the processes by which that choice will be consummated.
A DIAGNOSTIC EXAMINATION OF THE PROBLEM LOOSELY CALLED ‘THE NATIONAL QUESTION’.
Having observed the debate on Constitutional Amendment, National Conference (sovereign or not) and Referendum, it is clear to LNC that most actors and commentators (including regrettably lawyers, some of who are Senior Advocates and Professors, Senators, House Members and Heads of the Executive arm) do not seem to know the meaning of a Constitution nor that of Sovereignty; they fail to grasp the nexus between the two and therefore, whose prerogative it is to make or re-make a Constitution; they seem unable to fathom the grave implications of a disputed Constitution such as the case with the so-called ‘1999 Constitution’. There is yet another term known as ‘Suzerainty’ which has been the unseen monster driving the confusion and massive violence that have characterized the debate of the Nigerian Question from inception. It is therefore needful to explain these concepts as a necessary prelude to a meaningful and practical engagement with the subject.
THE MEANING OF ‘A CONSTITUTION’. In simple terms, to ‘constitute’ means putting or coming together of units to make one whole. In the case of Nigeria, Britain by fiat of the 1914 Amalgamation, put together a mosaic of ethnic blocs which it had subjugated piecemeal and ruled separately as Colony and Protectorates, labeling it ‘Nigeria’. The various supreme legal instruments called ‘Orders in Council’, regulating that experiment at artificial nation building, up to 1960 were the ‘Constitutions’ of that era (Lyttleton, Richards and MacPherson), wholly imposed by London. As independence approached, putting together had to give way to coming together by way of the various Constitutional Conferences in London and Lagos at which Delegations of the then three Regions (Region was the new nomenclature of the erstwhile Protectorates), which had been offered independence separately on certain conditions, explored the option of coming together to federate on their own terms. They had to agree on two key questions:
(a) whether to come together as one country, in other words, to federate; and
(b) on what terms?
The agreement they reached in answer to those two key questions was documented as the Independence Constitution of Nigeria, 1960, anchored fully on powers donated by the three Regions which already had their respective self-governance Constitutions prior to 1960. The overriding feature of that agreement was a federating model in which the Regions substantially retained their individual independence (autonomy), owned and controlled their resources, contributing therefrom towards the upkeep of the Center, a certain percentage (15%), for the limited functions jointly delegated to the Center by the Regions. Each Region had its own Constitution and developed at own pace, using its own resources.
As heavily manipulated by the departing British overlords as it was, this agreement was the basis of independent Nigeria becoming one country (one-Nigeria) in 1960, replacing the old basis of British imposition with a new one founded on agreement. The power by which the British imposed those pre-independent Constitutions derived from their suzerainty (the right of a country to rule over another country) over Nigeria in the colonial era whereas the power by which the Regional Delegations negotiated the Independence Constitution of 1960 derived from their sovereignty (ultimate political power in a country) which independence, in principle restored. Suzerainty is therefore an adverse power submerging and overwhelming sovereignty. The custodian of the power of suzerainty, per force, beneficially own and control all the assets and resources of the suppressed sovereignty.
When in 1966 the military intervention toppled these Constitutions and replaced them via Decree with an imposed unitary arrangement in which the autonomy of the Regions was abrogated and their powers and assets hijacked by the Central (Federal), the basis of Nigeria was destroyed and the country went into technical dissolution or coma. Lieutenant-Colonel Yakubu Gowon, as Head of the then disputed Nigeria admitted this much in his famous broadcast during the dark hours of Nigeria’s demise in 1966, when he declared that ‘the basis of Nigeria’s unity was no more there’. The last-ditch attempt to revive the dying Nigerian Union by accord in Aburi, Ghana January 1967 was jettisoned by the same Gowon who instead applied ruthless force to drag the break-away Biafra back to the Union in a 3-year genocidal war that claimed about 3.5million lives on the side of the injured peoples of Biafra, (the then Eastern Nigeria which form the bulk of today’s Lower Niger).
By resorting to force to subjugate the Republic of Biafra and re-establish one-Nigeria, Gowon’s Government fully assumed the suzerainty vacated by Britain, thereby submerging the sovereignty of the peoples. All Governments of Nigeria to date, since after Gowon, in refusing to restore the agreed basis of Nigeria, were consciously clinging to that power of suzerainty and therefore beneficially owning and controlling the assets and resources of the Sovereign Peoples of Nigeria and subjecting them to internal colonialism where they swim in obscene opulence while the peoples wallow in abject poverty.
This narrative will be incomplete if we do not interrogate the historical dynamics that threw up both the events of 1966 and the resultant Governments that could so completely overwhelm the sovereignty of the peoples just as the British were retreating because those dynamics introduce a horizontal complexity to what ordinarily looks like a vertical question of government suppressing its people. The solution models will of necessity be driven by both.
Recently declassified Colonial secret documents show that the departing British colonial authorities, for reasons bordering on economic benefit, had by a matrix of manipulations including gerrymandering and rigging, entrenched the Fulani-led Northern hegemony over Nigeria in a manner that would permanently keep real power in the hands of the North, resulting in a reality where what was packaged as ‘Independence’ 1960 was merely a transfer of the British suzerainty to their local agents, the Fulani.
Celebrating this great fortune with his lieutenants in the very week of Independence in the October, 1960, the then Northern Premier, Sir Ahmadu Bello declared that:
“The new nation called Nigeria should be an estate of our great-grandfather, Uthman Dan Fodio. We must ruthlessly prevent a change of power. We use the minorities of the North as willing tools and the South as a conquered territory and never allow them to rule over us, and never allow them to have control over their future” Parrot Newspaper, 12th Oct. 1960.
First is to note that the aforesaid pre-independence British manipulations, recently alluded to by President Jonathan in Udi at a burial ceremony, were directly responsible for the cataclysmic events that trailed the Independence elections which degenerated into the declaration of a State of Emergency in the Western Region on the 29th of May, 1962, further leading to the trial and imprisonment of Chief Obafemi Awolowo and then to the Wild Wild West that followed the Regional Elections of 1964, culminating in the military coup of January,1966.
Secondly, this 1960 Mission Statement and Battle Script which obviously was in joint-venture with Britain, best explains the mystery of the counter-coup of 1966 and its very bloody aftermath including the ruthless, genocidal war against Biafra and the ignoble role of Britain in that shame-laden chapter of recent human history. That war seems to be still in progress since most of the post-war punitive policies against the East remain firmly in place.
It is in fact self-evident, that the current Constitutional order represents a full implementation of that 1960 Mission Statement. This truth easily presents itself upon a review of the ruthless tactics employed, the main dramatis personae, their Regions of origin and roles assigned each Region in the Script vis-à-vis the new realities created by the fiat of Sardauna’s protégés in the affairs of each Region. Nigeria is now a master-servant enclave.
We now proceed to dissect the origin, emergence-process and specific outcomes of the current constitutional order for which reason it is being vehemently resisted and rejected across the country.
WHY WE REJECT THE NIGERIA DEFINED BY THE 1999 CONSTITUTION.
In exercise of the power of suzerainty and to make their gain permanent, our new conquerors, between 1966 and 1999, by a series of Decrees, comprehensively replaced the agreement upon which Nigeria was founded and, building upon the 1979 version, collated same into one volume in 1999 labeled ‘the 1999 Constitution’, which one Abdusalami Abubakar imposed via Decree No. 24 of 1999 with the egregious falsehood in its preamble that ‘we the people’ enacted it. This is fraud. This fraud is the basis of the current Nigeria and its governance. Force has replaced agreement as the basis of Nigeria and has been deployed via Decrees, to effect the following fundamental distortions in the original agreement founding the Nigerian Union –
(i) Our consent to the being and terms of the Nigerian Union was manufactured and emplaced in the preamble that foisted on us, the authorship of the instrument of our enslavement, the 1999 Constitution; in other words, our signature was forged to pretend that ‘we the people’ authorized our damnation;
(ii) the benefits and entitlements of the citizens under our social contract which the constitution is, was cancelled by S.6(6)C thereby legally absolving the government of any obligations to the citizens and therefore free the entire treasury for the beneficial use of its custodians in power. The outcome is the mind-boggling wealth of those in power and the heart-rending poverty ravaging over 90% of the populace; by this singular provision, no part of the over US$200M earned by Nigeria daily is meant for the populace as everything goes to service the fabulous lifestyles and greed of those in power and their sponsors; by government’s own admission, 72% of the current budget is earmarked to pay those in power. The rest is shared between corruption and infrastructure;
(iii) Appropriation provisions in Sections 81/82 and 121/122, which effectively hand over the spare keys of the treasury to heads of the executive branch at the center and in the states; 36 lame federating units styled ‘States’ replaced 4 strong, viable Regions;
(iv) 774 revenue-sucking-outlets styled LGAs replaced the good old service-rendering Local Councils;
(v) arising from (iii) & (iv) above, a heavily skewed representation and revenue sharing pattern that create a political majority from phantom majority whilst handing out a lion share of revenues to those secured its ownership by constitutional fraud;
(vi) assets, resources and powers of the Federating Units got hijacked and confiscated by a monstrous center to date;
(vii) a 68-item Federal Exclusive List strip the federating units of the most important governmental powers and functions thereby stultifying development and impairing security/order;
(viii) a culture of impunity entrenched by a regime of immunity entrenched by S.6(6)d and S.308; the former retrospectively provides a blanket immunity for all crimes committed by those in power, including murder, genocide and grand looting, from the 15th day of January, 1966 to the 29th of May, 1999. The latter shields from inquiry or sanction for any wrong-doing (including looting and murder), the 37 men and women (the President and 36 Governors and their deputies), who exclusively sign out, all monies in Nigeria’s treasury, while they are in office;
(ix) mediocrity replaced excellence under the guise of federal character cum quota system.
(x) a Land Use Decree by which massive expropriations were enacted against the peoples of Nigeria by their rulers
(xi) oaths of allegiance/office that bind those in power (the new custodians of suzerainty!), to protect and defend with all their might and ability, the fraud which our Constitution is. It will be plain stupidity to expect current beneficiaries of this order to repent and amend away their benefits.
These are the main constitutional grievances for which the LOWER NIGER CONGRESS rejects the Nigeria defined by the ‘1999 Constitution’ and commits itself to the task of securing a better political future for our people.
LNC posits that this 11-item list of Constitutional grievances (i-xi above), form the core of the questions Nigeria must answer now otherwise the brutally raped peoples of Nigeria will devise their own answers which may include exiting the Union.
President Jonathan recently declared electoral fraud as the worst form of corruption. We trust that Mr. President would agree with us that the Constitutional fraud outlined herein is more heinous and far more injurious to Nigeria and Nigerians than electoral fraud; Amendments or electoral reforms can neither remove the heavy, impoverishing constitutional shackles placed on the peoples nor diminish the stupendous benefits guaranteed by the same Constitution to office holders which is what really drives the extreme desperation to get into public office. The stakes are now so high that no outcome will be acceptable to all sides in the 2015 electoral round. Massive bloodshed is guaranteed to follow even if Mr. President declines to contest because then it would be the turn (or in fact duty) of aggrieved elements of Southern part of Nigeria to make the country ungovernable. Same happens if he contests. Head or tail, blood will flow if another election is allowed under this disputed Constitutional order. It will therefore be grossly irresponsible to plunge recklessly into such future of assured destruction.
For this reason and to halt a further perpetuation of fraud against our peoples as highlighted in our 11-items list of Constitutional grievances, LNC rejects the conduct of any further national elections under the 1999 Constitution, in the Lower Niger Territory, starting with the one scheduled for 2015 as each election reinforces the fraud. Politicians of Lower Niger origin are strongly advised to be on the side of their people by towing this line. Any deviation will be for purely selfish reasons and will pitch the peoples of Lower Niger against such politicians.
The direct result of the criminal transmogrification of Nigeria from a federal union to a unitary state and the hijack of our sovereignty by an indigenous suzerainty masquerading as government, is the cancerous decay now manifesting by way of total systems collapse in all sectors including security, infrastructure, electricity, education, healthcare etc, creating mass poverty, total societal dysfunction and justifying our failed-state rating world-wide.
To the extent that our Constitution is a forgery and a fraud, Nigeria itself has become a fraud and a criminal enterprise where corruption is official. This is a far bigger problem than officials being corrupt. The ‘book’ (our Constitution) to which we should have been bringing corrupt officials, was drawn up by the beneficiaries of grand corruption who authored all the Decrees made from 1966 to 1999, taking care to create avenues for further corruption and comprehensively protecting both past and potential beneficiaries of corruption. It is the case of the proprietors of a robbery gang, drawing up the rule-book for community security. As long as the 1999 Constitution is in place even with amendments, corruption remains hale and hearty, ensconced in the impregnable fortress of the Constitution beyond the reach of those who crow daily in indignation while the beneficiaries, in and out of power, laugh in derision, running a circus of probes and trials under the bogus banner of ‘war on corruption’. An elaborate asset-stripping scam code-named privatization typifies the gang’s business.
A further direct consequence of the fraudulence of our Constitution is the ubiquitous regional violent agitations. Without exception, each agitation is a violent rejection of one constitutional imposition or the other. MEND rejects the hijack and confiscation of the oil and gas resources of the Niger-Delta by the Exclusive List which vests the Federal Government with ownership and control of the resources. OPC rejects the hijack of power and responsibility for the internal security of Yorubaland by the Exclusive List which puts the all-important matter of security of life and property in Yorubaland exclusively in the hands of stranger elements who may not wish the Yoruba well. Pursuant to the lie in the preamble to the 1999 Constitution that ‘we the peoples of Nigeria have firmly and solemnly resolved to live in unity and harmony as one indivisible and indissoluble sovereign Nation’ MASSOB rejects that lie on behalf of the Igbo and other peoples of Eastern Nigeria who have been kept in Nigeria by naked force since 1967 when they were violently pushed to opt out of a Nigeria that had launched a campaign of genocide against them. BOKO HARAM rejects Nigeria’s unilateral constitutional imposition of democracy, secularity and western legislative, judicial and executive procedures as well as western pattern of learning, on their traditionally sharia territory.
Their various methods may be objectionable, but they are all at one in rejecting the imposed 1999 Constitution for various legitimate reasons. They are rejecting Nigeria as presently defined. The answer cannot lie in isolated dialogues with any of them since the changes they demand cannot be offered by government outside the framework of an all-inclusive constitutional re-negotiation. Those demands transcend issues of law and order.
Having reviewed key concepts and relevant history, the next is to zoom in on the ongoing debate about amendments, with a view to deciphering who between the people and the government (inclusive of the legislative arm) has the right and exclusive prerogative to make or amend the Constitution. Here we find a suitable paradigm guide to understanding the issues will be to juxtapose the ‘Constitution’ as it relates to a Country with ‘Memorandum and Articles of Association’ as it relates to a company.
Prospective Promoters/shareholders as owners of the enterprise, first agree to form themselves into a company and they spell out all the terms of their relationship in the would-be enterprise in a document called Memorandum and Articles of Association which they then register or incorporate. They subsequently hire a Management Team (who may also be shareholders) to carry out their wishes strictly as contained in the Memo and Articles. At no time does it become the legitimate business of the hired management team to wholly substitute or alter the contents of the Memo and Articles over the head of the owners, the shareholders.
In the case of a country, the peoples in exercise of their sovereignty, agree to form a Country (the enterprise) or political union on certain terms. They spell out this agreement and terms in a Charter document called the ‘Constitution’ which defines the enterprise. They then periodically, hire a management team called ‘Government’, by a process known as ‘elections, to carry out their wishes, strictly according their Charter Document, the Constitution. At no time does it become the legitimate business of that hired management team called the government (or any of its arms including the Legislature), to wholly substitute or amend the Charter Document, the Constitution over the head of the owners of the enterprise, the people.
Put differently, at no point can the hired Management Team (or the Government), dictate to the body of shareholders (or the sovereign peoples), what the contents of the Memo and Articles (or the Constitution) should be. If the hired management team fraudulently changes the Memo/Articles thereby hijacking the enterprise, then the shareholders must find a way to re-enact or restore their Memo/Article. If prevented, they can dissolve the company and retrieve their individual assets. In the same vein, if the government (and note that government is a continuum), fraudulently changes the Constitution and hijacks the country as happened between 1966 and 1999, then the peoples must find a way to re-establish their Union (country) by a Sovereign meeting or they dissolve the Union by unilateral exits. The limited powers of amendments usually found in Constitutions is always made subject to a Referendum, giving the people, as principals, the final say on what changes their servants, the government propose. That is the whole argument raging about amendments and the question of referendum.
What happened to Nigeria in 1966 was that the Management Team (Government), toppled the Memo and Articles (Constitution) establishing the company (Nigeria). Their successors-in-title, the present Government (through the National Assembly) is now telling the owners of Nigeria, the peoples, to shut up and keep quiet.
A dangerous cocktail of ignorance, arrogance and dishonesty now drives the National Assembly to believe that a condescending one-day circus tagged ‘People Public Session’ in 360 locations across Nigeria will make the outcome of their amendment charade, “a Peoples’ Constitution”. Let legislators of Lower Niger origin be informed that our peoples feel very insulted and progressively view their participation in the Abuja charade as a betrayal by determined rogues for self-serving purpose, not at all on behalf of their constituents.
OPTIONS FOR RECONSTRUCTION: BETWEEN UNITARISM (ABUJA), FEDERATION (ABURI) AND INDEPENDENT UNITS (ARABA).
From the narrative above, it is clear that Nigeria was founded as a Federation of Autonomous Regions which made great progress in healthy rivalry. It got into the wrong route since 1966 when it drifted progressively into unitarism and over-centralization. This led to a steady decline that has resulted in much bloodshed, anguish, misery and unimaginable mass poverty amidst plenty, serial electoral heist and culminating in an all-sector systems failure, prompting centrifugal sentiments/actions in rejection of unitarism by way of agitations and militancy, with prospects of a sudden violent disintegration. The answer must lie in moving away completely from unitarism back to federalism if there is still goodwill enough to federate or for the entrapped ethnic nations to exit the failed Union in formations of their choice as already unfolding. These were the two options open to Nigeria since 1966, but which its arrogant operators, bluntly refused to explore until now when the ABURI option appears to have gone off the table. We shall get to that issue shortly.
OPTIONS OF METHODS AND MODALITIES: BETWEEN AMENDMENTS, NATIONAL CONFERENCE AND SOVEREIGN CONFERENCE OF ETHNIC NATIONALITIES.
It is evident that the crux of the Nigerian tragedy today is that we the people neither discussed nor agreed on the being and terms of the current imposed Nigeria since after the 1966 demise of the originally agreed Nigeria. Amendment of the fraudulent instrument is not an option since the minimum requirement is for the federating units to first discuss and agree as sovereignties before documenting their agreement in a federating Constitution. Those in power, especially the legislature, who insist on amendments are provocatively proclaiming themselves as the new sovereign power and therefore daring the peoples to do their worst. AMENDMENT IS NOT AN OPTION.
Those who obdurately cling to the 1999 Constitution as an unquestionable source of governmental authority are actually aiding and abetting a high crime for which individual criminal responsibility may attach, especially in the hands of those they claim to represent in Abuja and various State Houses across the Nigeria. If they did not know before, by this publication, their days of ignorance must come to an end. Even by the admission of the authors of the 1999 Constitution in S.14(2)a, ‘Sovereignty belongs to the people of Nigeria from whom, government, through this Constitution, derives all its powers and authority’. The ‘we the people’ in the preamble refers this universal truism in the jurisprudence of contemporary constitutions.
Proponents of ‘NATIONAL CONFERENCE’ who hold Nigeria sacrosanct and non-negotiable, and who in their imagination, vest the Government with our sovereignty in perpetuity, are telling the rest of us that the current Nigeria of imposition which creates a master-servant relationship (apologies to Lt.Gen Alani Akinrinade), in an internal colonialism setting, must stay while we must all shut up and be content with our slave status. By refusing to acknowledge the sovereignty of the federating nationalities, such that those nationalities come with same to the table of discussions and agree on terms of federating, they are either ignorant, dishonest or reckless. In this category we find the likes of PROJECT NIGERIA, THE NATIONAL SUMMIT GROUP and a couple of other amorphous groups and individuals including Ibrahim Babangida who earlier this year declared the indivisibility and indissolubility of Nigeria as ‘SETTLED ISSUES’, rudely reminding the rest of us that the terms of Nigeria’s Constitution were settled in the battlefields of Biafra. SUCH A NATIONAL CONFERENCE WILL BE AN EXERCISE IN FUTILITY not too different from Obasanjo’s doomed-from-start National Political Reform Conference of 2005, once it is not premised on the acknowledged sovereignty of the peoples of Nigeria.
OUR POSITION AND OUR CHOICE OF RECONSRUCTION OPTION CUM METHODOLOGY.
Going by what we have examined so far, LOWER NIGER CONGRESS posits that only a SOVEREIGN CONFERENCE OF THE ETHNIC NATIONS OF NIGERIA, premised on the acknowledged sovereignty of each, offer a dim hope of forging any kind of Union out of erstwhile Nigeria. We fear that even that dim hope has been banished by the emergence of a violent demand for Sharia in the 12 contiguous States of the Muslim North where Sharia had been enacted and enforced for 12 years running, since the rest of the Country cannot be forced to embrace Sharia nor can anyone compel the Sharia North to abandon Sharia, their way of life which Nigeria has affected. It is obvious that Nigeria is now headed towards the EMERGENCE OF UNITS of INDEPENDENT FEDERATIONS which may in the future work out new protocols of relationship with one another. This option is fully backed by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 2007, which put a global seal on the right to self-determination. The only choice left to make is whether to allow the process evolve in peace or by violence. Referendum is a tested mechanism to head off violence.
Those who in unfounded paranoia, describe this natural unbundling as ‘break-up’ in a negative sense, should rise above their fears and engage with the process in a manner that would obviate violence. We had 45 years to restore the Union of Nigeria but greed, arrogance and wickedness prevailed. It is now too late. We can only seek to work out good and friendly neighbourliness post-unbundling.
LNC invites leaders of self-determination groups, town unions, lawyers, the academia, clergymen and women, NGOs, the Government particularly the National/ State Assembly Members, Labour, students and the media to digest and publicly engage the issues raised herein to confront the forces of darkness holding our collective destinies hostage. You must speak up publicly for or against. Silence here is not golden and will be read by those you lead as siding with an evil system to torment the people. The media must reset the debate agenda, armed with these illuminations. International investors and development partners are also requested to re-appraise their engagements in Nigeria against the background of these facts and perspectives.
For a transitional framework and to avoid anarchy in the unfolding drama of Nigeria’s unraveling, LNC strongly recommends that we do exactly what the Apartheid South-African Government of Fredrick De Clerk did in 1990 when the Apartheid Constitution of South Africa, imposed by a white minority, was rejected by the black majority in South Africa. That Government suspended further elections under the Apartheid Constitution, initiated an all-inclusive Sovereign Conference (CODESA), which discussed and agreed on a fresh basis for South Africa which then became the new Constitution upon which the election of 1994, won by Mandela’s ANC was conducted. That Government remained in office in a transitional capacity for that period. Nigeria has reached that same bus-stop where a Constitution imposed by a tiny minority is being violently rejected countrywide by the oppressed majority. LNC prescribes a similar transitional arrangement for Nigeria without further delay. Any other approach is likely to end in catastrophe and unprecedented human misery.
LNC salutes the vision and courage of the YORUBA NATIONAL ASSEMBLY and the enlarged Elders Conclave which endorsed its work, for stepping forward to lead the Yoruba Nation at this crucial time and particularly, for rejecting the amendment charade together with the so-called 1999 Constitution as basis of Nigeria; most importantly for directing Yoruba Members of the National Assembly to withdraw further participation in the Amendment circus which it aptly called a journey to nowhere and for declaring that the 2015 elections would be the last the Yoruba would tolerate on its soil under the fraudulent 1999 Constitution (Guardian, Wed. 28/11/12 ).
LNC equally salutes ALADINMA, of our Igbo arm, for earlier disclaiming the same 1999 Constitution and rejecting further elections under it in Igboland (Sun June 21, 2012). Same for the United Middle-Belt Youth Congress which had declared same in the Middle-Belt. NO DEMOCRACY CAN BE BUILT ON A MASTER-SERVANT CONSTITUTION.
LNC also salutes the masses of Lower Niger who in large numbers have trooped out in several cities, towns and villages in support of the Victory Marches of thanksgiving to God for preserving us in our space, more than 45 years after ferocious forces of genocide came against us from land, air and sea. As the Victory March train gets to other locations and as we continue to enlighten our peoples for a Referendum in the Lower Niger on the subject of this communication to ascertain the true wishes of our peoples, we invite Volunteers who wish to help co-ordinate the process in their areas to sign up for training in the nearest LNC office or do so on-line via the website, www.lowernigercongress.com, or www.aladinma.org. or call the numbers shown above. Also view the YouTube video title ‘WHO OWNS PAPA’S LAND?’ for a deeper insight into the issues under scrutiny.
For an objective evaluation of Achebe’s assertions in his book on Biafra, see the 800-page Compendium of raw clips from Foreign War Correspondents and other foreign eye witnesses including Red Cross, Caritas, World Council of Churches, etc, who reported the war from the front-lines real-time 1967-1970, in a new book titled ‘THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE NIGERIAN-BIAFRA WAR’. Copies of this sobering holocaust account are available in all LNC offices throughout the Country. Evidence and facts informing the LNC intervention are in that compendium.
Finally, guided by the post-war events of 1970-1974 relating to asset forfeiture and seizure, LNC requests persons of Lower Niger (Former Eastern Nigeria and the then Mid-West) origin who own immovable property outside the Lower Niger Territory to take an inventory of such assets with valuation, in readiness for a registration of same in the LOWER NIGER ASSET PROTECTION AND GUARANTEE SCHEME designed to avoid or at the least minimize such losses (at least in value) which may arise from any changes in the polity. Further information on the modalities for inventory/registration will be made available by advertorials in national dailies in the near future.
Long live the peoples of the Lower Niger. Long live all lovers of justice and equity in Nigeria.
Dated this 30th day of November 2012.
SIGNED
FRED AGBEYEGBE ESQ. PRESIDENT
TONY NNADI ESQ. SECRETARY-GENERAL
NOTES:
The video mentioned in the document, “Who Owns Papa's Land”
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