Acting leader of the pan-Yoruba socio-political organisation, Afenifere, Chief Ayo Adebanjo, has accused former President Olusegun Obasanjo being responsible for the current travails facing Nigerians by failing to change the system when he was in power.
Adebanjo made the accusation while speaking in an interview with TRIBUNE, on the country’s 22-year journey into democracy.
The Afenifere leader who has repeatedly maintained that Nigeria's problem is its constitution, said Obasanjo was the first President who had the opportunity to change the constitution since he was brought to power to appease the Southwest, but instead, chose to exploit the defect in the constitution for his own personal gain.
Adebanjo also said he finds it strange that the North are against secession because they were actually the first to oppose one Nigeria in 1953.
Speaking on what he thinks is wrong with Nigeria, he said, "Principally, it is the constitution. It was even Obasanjo that should have changed the system. He had the opportunity.
"He was the first person who had the opportunity to change the system because he was brought in to persuade people of Yorubaland. He could have used the opportunity if he really realised what the people were complaining about.
"Unfortunately, in my view, he too took the advantage of the defect in the constitution to do certain things he shouldn’t have done. He didn’t rule as a civilian person, but to a large extent, he was a better president than what we have now. We at Afenifere believe that a lot of radical things should have been done.
"Take the questions of revenue allocation and devolution of power, for instance, he could have done something about them, because all we have now is arbitrariness. The constitution we have now is a military constitution and that is why the problem is there and that is why I am saying that we must go back to the constitution we had at independence, which was agreed to by the leaders of the country at the London conference – the constitution agreed to by the Sardauna, agreed to by Awolowo, agreed to by Azikiwe. That is what we had. That was the system that established true federalism."
He said the North shouldn't be too worried about secession because they were the ones who actually started it.
"People don’t know why we are having these crises. The people who started the secession move are now the ones condemning people that are asking for secession.
"It was Sardauna who first said he was not going to be in Nigeria in 1953. It is on record that when the McPherson Constitution was unitary and Enahoro, as an Action Group lawmaker, moved the motion for self-government and the Eastern Regional Government supported us, the North opposed the idea.
"And when the House adjourned at that time, all ministers in that government were members of the House. When they left the House on that day, after that motion, the crowd outside the parliament booed the Sardauna. That was what angered him and he said ‘Araba’, literally meaning ‘we are going”, and the nine-point programme came.
"When that crisis came, the Colonial Office under Littleton sent for all the leaders of government at that time to the London Constitutional Conference in Lancashire House where they had that constitution. That was in 1954. That was when the country was established under a federal system. That was when premiership was included in the constitution of the region and each region was autonomous. The constitution of each region was written separately. That was what we carried on to Independence.
"That is why some people still say that Buhari couldn’t be more educated than Sardauna; he couldn’t be more Fulani than Sardauna; he couldn’t be more religious than Sardauna. The constitution we all agreed to before we came together, why don’t you want to go back to that? What we are saying is that let’s go back to the constitution we all agreed to at Independence. It is what we are demanding. It was the military that changed the constitution in 1966 and that is what we still have today.
"When they said they were going to go back to democracy in 1998, Afenifere demanded that they should send us back to the constitution you met us with and we said if you are going to do that, there must be a sovereign national conference. The sovereign national conference agitation was a precursor of restructuring because people are confusing things. We are not latter-day federalists.
"That was the agitation we were making before Obasanjo came into office. We said if you are not going to send us back, we must have a sovereign national conference to agree on whether we are going to stay together and on what condition we are going to stay together. And the word sovereignty, Obasanjo translated it to be sovereignty affecting his office, saying that there could not be two sovereignties because of his office.
"But I told him then that the sovereignty we were talking about did not affect the incumbent president. It is the sovereignty of the conference we want to call and that whatever we decided there was the sovereignty. You have no right to subtract or add to it as you did to the 1979 Constitution by putting the Land Use Decree.
"So, I was specific. Whatever that conference decided is sovereign, only subject to a referendum. That was the agitation we had with Tinubu, Osoba, Adebayo, Akande and others before we contested the elections under the Alliance for Democracy.
"So, when I say these people have sold out, this is what I am referring to; that they didn’t keep to that. We took part in the 1999 elections on the condition that there must be sovereign national conference. We made it an election issue to get the mandate of the people and that was the basis on which they were elected. I want to emphasise that.
"I want to let Tinubu, Akande and others know that that was the campaign issue for which the Alliance for Democracy was elected into office. And to back it up, after the elections, Papa Adesanya led the Afenifere and the Alliance for Democracy leaders to each House of Assembly to pass a resolution on sovereign national conference with Tinubu in the Lagos House of Assembly, Osoba in the Ogun State House of Assembly, Akande in the Osun House of Assembly, and in all the six states under the Alliance for Democracy. It is on record and it is not a question of Adebanjo just deceiving anybody. Go and check the record.
"We told our governors not to go to Abuja for anything. Now we have got the mandate under the campaign for a sovereign national conference. This was how they sold out. This thing has been on and on until the question of restructuring came in, that we want to go back to federalism. It was the military that destroyed the structure of Nigeria," he concluded.