NINAS Secretariat
11 November 2023
This is a Rejoinder written on behalf of NINAS to address enquiries emanating from various recent public postulations regarding the urgent imperative for a Constitutional Re-engineering of the Distressed Federation of Nigeria.
This clamour for a Grand Constitutional Re-engineering of Nigeria has over time, acquired the loose street nomenclature of “Restructuring” but NINAS has in its December 16, 2020 Joint Multi-Regional Constitutional Force Majeure Proclamation defined clearly in Terms of CONTENTS, PROCESS and MODALITIES, what that Re-engineering entails, beyond chanting, lamentations and posturing.
In that raging Debate on Nigeria’s Union Dispute, someone in Oklahoma sent to NINAS, the news report of a recent State-of-the-Union Meeting by a group known as ‘the Patriots’ a query which reads: “Why are they dancing around instead of embracing the NINAS Project?”(The said Patriots Meeting had in attendance, former Commonwealth Secretary-General, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, Afenifere Leader, Chief Ayo Adebanjo, and Nigeria’s former Finance Minister, Dr Kalu Idika Kalu amongst others).
Here is an excerpt from the Statement issued by the group from their Meeting, November 9, 2023, which prompted the Oklahoma Query:
“We are very concerned at the current lamentable state of affairs in our country including the declining sense of national unity, the insecurity of life and property, the increasing poverty and unemployment afflicting our citizens, especially the youth.
Experience over the last 30 years has shown that despite the declared best intentions of our governments, Nigeria’s unity, internal security and economy have continued to deteriorate. In our view, the reason is that our governments have continued to scratch the surface instead of addressing the fundamental issue of the governance system which flows from the constitution of the country.
We believe that President Tinubu’s government has a historic opportunity and responsibility for fixing this fundamental challenge. If he, like the previous governments makes the mistake of avoiding to effect the necessary fundamental change by bringing in a new people’s constitution, Nigeria will inevitably continue its present dangerous decline. Only a truly Federal Constitution as was agreed by Nigeria’s founding fathers will give the country a chance of tackling its current challenges effectively”.
Tony Nnadi, on behalf of NINAS, responded to the Oklahoma Query as follows:
The reasons many continue to dance around the NINAS Clear Pathway to Union Reconfiguration range from Dishonesty, Greed, Self-Deceit and Obduracy. That dance will likely continue until the dancers suffer a fracture of the waist when the might of the unavoidable truth of NINAS will overtake them.
Three of the five men seated in the front row in this picture, Kalu Idika Kalu, Ayo Adebanjo and Wale Okuniyi drifted away to other pursuits (particularly Elections and Electioneering) at various times, after being involved in PRONACO and other post-NADECO processes that eventually culminated in NINAS and the Constitutional Force Majeure of December 16, 2020. Wale Okuniyi for instance, was Director of Publicity in PRONACO (2005-2006) but had twice tried to run for public office in the course of the last ten years.
Unfortunately, as the NINAS Processes evolved through the Five Phases of its Concept Designs, crystallizing in MNN (which in 2007 launched the Legal Challenge on the Legitimacy of the 1999 Constitution by way of a Suit in Court) and ‘Change Nigeria’ (distorted as ‘Save Nigeria’ by another renegade, Tunde Bakare), these “compatriots” of ours had over the years, continued to show up with various distorted versions of the NINAS Union Reconstruction Designs at every gathering convened in search of solutions to Nigeria’s Debilitating Structural and Constitutional Maladies, masquerading under various banners.
In time, it has dawned on all, including Government, and especially in the unsettling aftermath of the bungled 2023 Presidential Election, that the NINAS Constitutional Force Majeure of December 16, 2020 is an encirclement of the monster operating as Unitary Nigeria and that there is really no viable way of preserving that dying monster from the sweeping consequences of the Self-Propelling NINAS’ Time-Bound Union Reconfiguration Propositions and Processes, hence the desperation of the Distressed System to sell to Nigerians, the dummy of “Restructuring” in the manner being suddenly canvased by Pro-Establishment Groups including the South and Middle-Belt Leadership Forum (SMBLF).
In the Q-4 of 2023 and as the dust settles around the wreckage of Nigeria’s Crash-Landed 2023 Electoral Flight, we are now in the Countdown to the Altar-Call by which NINAS shall rally ALL who now Reject the Unworkable, Fraudulent, and Imposed Unitary Constitution of Nigeria as basis of the Nigerian Union, into Joint Multi-Regional Actions that will precipitate a TRANSITIONING for immediate Union Reconfiguration.
In the meantime and amidst the convergence of Countrywide support for the NINAS Union Reconfiguration Propositions, we suspect that this sudden convergence of agents of Unitary Nigeria is to obfuscate and derail the Clear-cut NINAS Pathway to the Orderly Union Renegotiation, Reconfiguration and Reconstruction that Nigeria urgently requires if it must avert the looming disastrous consequences of wrongheadedly clinging to imposed Unitary Constitutional Arrangements in a Multi-Ethnic Union.
This Rejoinder is to alert all that NINAS is monitoring the poorly disguised attempt by the Custodians and Enforcers of Unitary Nigeria, to sell the bogus version of “Restructuring” to the Peoples of Nigeria who are clamouring for the Genuine Union Reconfiguration that NINAS is pushing.
That bogus version of “Restructuring” essentially looks towards the National Assembly as venue for the Constitutional Reconstruction of Unitary Nigeria. This sinister attempt which only reinforces the continuing hijack of the Sovereignty of the Peoples of Nigeria is Dead on Arrival as it essentially seeks to evade the Two-Stage Process and other enabling Modalities stipulated by the Five-Point Proposition of NINAS Constitutional Force Majeure which already upended all such deceits.
Specifically, NINAS has credible intelligence regarding the back-channel liaisons between the minders of the current Legitimacy-Challenged “Federal Government” of Nigeria and the wider network of the Custodians, Enforcers and Agents of Post-War Unitary Nigeria, via which they try desperately to side-step the NINAS Two-Stage Union Reconfiguration Process which invariably Retrieves the hijacked Sovereignty of the Constituent Components of Nigeria. Those bogus and ill-defined “Restructuring” cannot succeed because the NINAS Propositions already shut off all available escape routes for the old order including any National Assembly-midwifed “Restructuring” or the kind of One-Stage Conference-led Constitution-Making Process like the Constituent Assembly of 1977, the Abacha Conference of 1995, the Obasanjo Conference 2005 and the Jonathan Conference of 2014 in which the First Resolution taken by Delegates on the Floor of their First Plenary was that the Unity of Nigeria was not Negotiable and therefore was not up for Discussion at the Conference, thus upturning the very Basis for which President Jonathan Convened the Conference.
NINAS on that ground, stayed away from that Conference, a decision now vindicated, sadly, by the moribund outcome of that Conference as Nigeria continues its Free Fall.
We Must Now Discuss Nigeria or We Disperse.
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