A former Head of State, Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar (retd.), has dismissed as false the long-standing claim that Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution was written by the Military.
He insisted that close to 95 per cent of the document was lifted from the 1979 Constitution, a text drafted by 49 civilian legal experts with no soldiers involved.
Abdulsalami disclosed that the decision to adopt the 1979 Constitution, rather than General Sani Abacha’s unpopular 1995 Draft Constitution, came to him as a welcome relief after a 25-member committee he set up found that Nigerians nationwide, at home and in the diaspora, had overwhelmingly rejected the Abacha-era document.
The revelations are contained in Chapter 23 of Abubakar’s 264-page, 27-chapter autobiography titled ‘Call of Duty,’ obtained by our correspondent on Saturday at the public presentation of the book at the Aso Rock Villa, Abuja.
The presentation was held to mark the former Head of State’s 84th birthday and was attended by President Bola Tinubu, who was represented by Vice President Kashim Shettima as Special Guest of Honour.
Abdulsalami revealed that upon taking office in June 1998, he set up a 25-member Constitution Debate Co-ordinating Committee, chaired by Justice Niki Tobi with Dr Suleiman Kumo as Deputy Chairman, to coordinate a national debate on Abacha’s 1995 Draft Constitution, not to write a fresh one.
He wrote, “At the inauguration of the CDCC on 11 November 1998, I raised several contentious issues in the Draft 1995 Constitution and mandated them to come up with fresh ideas.
“I need to reemphasise here that their job was not to write a new Constitution but to coordinate a debate on the draft. I have heard many critics say the Niki Tobi Committee was set up to write a new Constitution. That is absolutely false.”
He disclosed that the committee received a total of 405 memoranda from ethnic, cultural and regional associations, with the Afenifere/NADECO bloc insisting the 1995 draft was an “Abacha Constitution” that should be discarded entirely, while Nigerians in the United States held a separate forum on the document at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Washington, D.C.
According to Abdulsalami, Justice Tobi’s committee found a national consensus when its findings were submitted.
He quoted Justice Tobi as reporting, “In the light of the memoranda and the oral presentation on the 1995 Draft Constitution, it is clear that Nigerians basically opt for the 1979 Constitution with relevant amendments.
“Putting it in another language, the common denominator in the mouths of Nigerians the world over is the 1979 Constitution with relevant amendments.
“They want it, and they have copiously given their reasons for their choice in the different memoranda and oral presentations. So, we have recommended to the Provisional Ruling Council the adoption of the 1979 Constitution with relevant amendments from the Draft 1995 Constitution.”
Abdulsalami admitted that the idea of simply reverting to the 1979 Constitution had not originally occurred to him, but that the recommendation came as a relief because it offered the fastest route out of a looming political crisis.
“I must confess that this was a welcome relief to me. Adopting the Draft Constitution wholesale would definitely be opposed by the Afenifere/NADECO bloc, which never wanted to have anything to do with Abacha.
“There was the real danger that we could go into another phase of crisis over that. For someone who wanted to get the transition programme done with as quickly as possible, I was quite comfortable with the option of adopting the 1979 Constitution.
“In all honesty, the thoughts of the 1979 Constitution did not initially cross my mind at all. After Tobi’s presentation, I found it attractive. That Constitution was a well-debated document,” he wrote.
He noted that many of the same politicians who later campaigned vigorously against the 1999 Constitution had themselves participated in debating the 1979 Constitution and contested elections under it.
“It is ironic that many of those vociferously campaigning against the 1999 Constitution participated in the debate over the 1979 Constitution and even ran for various elections under it.
They loved the Constitution then but now regard its replica as the worst legal document ever,” Abdulsalami wrote.