NADECO Demands Federal Constitutional Governance Before Elections

Bennett Oghifo

The National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) has said that Nigeria must return to federal constitutional governance before the holding of any election, since it was the foundation on which the nation’s independence was negotiated, but ignored by the Nigerian State. NADECO, in a statement last night on the state of the nation, to commemorate Nigeria’s independence on October 1, 2022, said “Nigeria’s priority for political stability and equity is a return to federal constitutional governance, not elections.”

They reached this conclusion at their National Steering Committee meetings held between 22 and 25th of September, 2022, where they reviewed the state of the nation since the commencement of the Fourth Republic in 1999.

The group said it made its demand and “sobering observations after a thorough and exhaustive assessment of the standing of the country.”

It wondered what tangible gains Nigerians have benefitted from all the elections held since 1999.

“Therefore, the current dubious rat race to hold elections in the midst of aggravated security crises, political instability, unbelievable depth of economic deprivations and misery is a misplaced priority and insensitivity to the popular, nation-wide demand for a return to federal constitutional governance because a sectional agenda is being foisted and programmed to retain its hold on the country at all cost.

“No one is fooled to believe that the election is to consolidate democracy considering how the two main so called parties abandoned rotational presidency agreement for equity, but to further the imposition of ethnic agenda which has denied Nigeria the chance to provide modern, transparent, people oriented governance and where the popular will of the people is treated withm the highest regard,” the group said.

According to NADECO, “Returning Nigeria to Federal Constitutional Governance is not the end in itself but will provide a legitimate foundation for the construction of all other derivatives that make federalism a necessity for an heterogeneous country.

“The alternative is certainly to be more of the same whereby the manipulated and compromised so called winners will continue with their provocative corruption of all public institutions to the shame and deprivation of the fundamental rights of the majority of Nigerians. This national structure that is warped, skewed, and lopsided is unsustainable.

They condemned the kind of democracy the country is practicing, “when Presidential Nomination form is sold for N100 million and many states cannot pay N30,000 minimum wage. Nigerian Universities have been on strike for over six months now, but the unreasonable and provocative take home pay of most political office holders are being regularly paid.”

They called on King Charles III, as head of the Commonwealth, “to act timeously and without equivocation to demonstrably take steps to avert the possible counter reactions from the entrapped ethnic nationalities under severe anguish of deprivations of their fundamental human rights to self-determination, incessant discriminations in appointments to high economic

and political offices, abysmal failure of the Nigerian State to provide

security for life and property, including ethnic cleansing in many parts of the

middle belt and southern regions, and permanently being forced to comply with

all these indignities because of an illegitimate and forged “1999

Constitution” which has appropriated to the monopolised unitary and

centralised government, the ethnic nationalities’ natural endowments, thereby

replacing the legitimate and negotiated federal constitution which was

the binding chord upon which the various ethnic nationalities were forced to be

part of a geographical and political pace called Nigeria.”

NADECO

said its position has become “inevitable because the Nigerian State has total

disregard for the popular will and sensitivities of most ethnic nationalities