The Untenable Unitary Constitution Is Nigeria's Problem And Neither Elections Nor A New President Will Fix That Problem: Transition For Constitutional Reconstruction Is The Pathway To Redemption.

Tony Nnadi, NINAS
07 May 2026

As noise and commotion continue in the build-up to the doomed 2027 electoral cycle, the media space is inundated with videos of Tinubu’s insulting boasts about his excellent performance as President since 2023 and how he will continue in 2027. There are also countless videos of Peter Obi reeling disheartening economic statistics showing how backward Nigeria is in the comity of nations and how his emergence as President of Nigeria will dramatically reverse the situation of Nigeria.

As we endure the insults and boasts of Tinubu in our pain of self-evident gross misgovernance of the present, it has become necessary to beam the searchlights on the alternative being rambunctiously advertised in the form of a potential Peter Obi Presidency in 2027.

Here is a typical clip of Peter Obi’s pitch, titled “Lamentations and Homilies of Candidate Peter Obi”:

Every single thing lamented by Peter Obi in this homily and others before it flows from the Fraudulent Unitary Constitution of Nigeria, ranging from the cost of governance, insecurity, corruption, unemployment, mass impoverishment, et cetera. The Constitution sets up a society and defines the boundaries of power and responsibilities.

Election is merely the mechanism by which new leaderships are processed and mandated by the people periodically to steer the ship of state under the Constitution that establishes and defines the Union, setting in place and delineating the power infrastructure and the fundamental rules of engagement, including the structure of the federation, the systems, processes and institutions of governance, as well as boundaries of power and authority.

Elections will therefore not cure the fundamental anomalies emanating from wrong constitutional arrangements, which is precisely the case with Nigeria, and the principal reason for the multidimensional failures and dysfunctions of Nigeria.

Unfortunately, neither the people being misgoverned nor the political merchants contesting for power seem interested in solving this fundamental anomaly. It has therefore become a vicious cycle of reinforcing Nigeria’s catastrophic failures and dysfunctions since 1999—election after election (2003, 2007, 2011, 2015, 2019 & 2023)—and now we are bent on heading heedlessly into yet another futile cycle in 2027 that is already threatening to plunge Nigeria into chaos.

From Tinubu seeking re-election to his challengers, everyone is discussing only economic plans that promise to turn Nigeria into paradise and magically cure its deep-running political problems, while ignoring the fundamentally flawed constitutional foundations holding Nigeria down.

Candidate Atiku Abubakar, who grabbed PDP’s Presidential Ticket in the 2019 electoral cycle while vociferously promoting restructuring, has since then neither lifted a finger toward union reconstruction nor spoken about the urgent need to rework Nigeria’s untenable unitary constitutional foundation.

Candidate Peter Obi, who as recently as 2021 declared that Nigeria was like a vehicle with a knocked engine (an unworkable constitution) and that the search should first be for a new engine (viable constitution) and not a new driver (president), turned around in 2022 to launch his presidential bid with the claim that “the constitution is not the reason Nigeria is where it is.”

Elections mandated by the Unitary Constitution of Nigeria—to which winners must swear and by which they must govern—will not cure the untenable, death-dispensing, terror-facilitating, poverty-breeding, and corruption-enabling constitution, no matter who emerges as president.

The solution to Nigeria is to enter into a transition for union reconfiguration to rework the fundamentally flawed constitutional arrangements.

Anyone who genuinely seeks change in Nigeria must be committed to dismantling the machinery of the 1999 Constitution under which the current system operates.

To continually lament the outcomes of dysfunction while clinging to the constitutional engine producing them is akin to mopping the floor instead of turning off the tap from which the water flows.

NINAS unequivocally posits that the solution to Nigeria’s failures and dysfunctions lies in an immediate transition toward constitutional reconstruction—not another round of national elections under the untenable 1999 Constitution.

NINAS also posits that the Five-Point Proposition of its December 16, 2020 Constitutional Force Majeure Proclamation offers a viable, orderly, and immediate mechanism for initiating and executing constitutional reconstruction in Nigeria which is now at the brink of a catastrophic collapse .

NINAS Broadcast Clips for Further Insight

Break The Chains of Unitary Bondage: Transition Now
1999 Constitution Creates Massive Avenues For Corruption & Protects The Beneficiaries
Things That Will Not Change Under 1999 Constitution No Matter Who Becomes President – Part 1
Understanding The Workings & Processes of NINAS Union Reconstruction Template
Drawing The Battle-Line Against The Fraud of 1999 & Its Enforcers
Defunct Federation of Nigeria: Urgent Reconstruction Imperative & Mechanism