Protests over hunger: APC claims Tinubu can’t renounce the 1999 constitution
The All Progressives Congress has expressed its disappointment with the planned August 1 statewide protest, urging its organisers to reconsider their demands that President Bola Tinubu revoke the 1999 Constitution.
Disclosing this information followed a closed-door meeting between the ruling party and the Forum of APC State Chairmen at the Abuja national secretariat on Friday, during which the plan for the demonstration was discussed.
Several state actors and elder statesmen in Nigeria have heatedly debated the need to amend the constitution during the previous twenty years.
On March 18, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, the governor of Lagos State, joined Chief Emeka Anyaoku, a former Commonwealth Secretary-General, other prominent governors, diplomats, lawyers, and other elderly statesmen in calling for the Nigerian government to repeal the 1999 Constitution due to its lack of legitimacy.
Renewing calls for the president to abandon the constitution he had pledged to defend would be an enormous undertaking, according to the ruling party’s National Secretary, Senator Ajibola Basiru.
The organisers of the planned hunger strike had fifteen demands, and Basiru’s remark was a response to one of them.
In the last two weeks, Nigerians have expressed a range of emotions in response to the impending protest, which is set to take place from August 1-15.
‘End Bad Government’ and ‘Tinubu Must Go’ were among the trending topics on social media for weeks.
Tinubu lacks the authority to repeal the Constitution of 1999 on his own, claims the APC national secretary.
He spoke about the 15 requests that were presented as a charter and how the National Working Committee meeting and our party leader considered them intellectually. We reviewed it, and we found that the majority of the concerns expressed were not grounds for objection. Considering their potential for constitutional modification and closeness to the political arena.
“We addressed each issue individually.” To begin, they advocated for a sovereign national conference and a subsequent national referendum to replace the 1999 Constitution with a people-made constitution for the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Who will repeal the constitution that was passed in 1999? Is it possible that the president who was elected and swore to reject the constitution of 1999 will actually do so? Even a protester’s freedom to demonstrate rests on their rights, as stated in the Constitution of 1999.
In Nigeria, the president cannot use executive order to change the constitution. No president may repeal the Constitution of 1999 on his own. A simple majority in the National Assembly and a simple majority in the State Assembly are necessary for this to happen. In the first place, you want the president to do something he doesn’t have the authority or desire to do.
Proposal to do away with the Senate and transfer legislative power to the House of Representatives was also opposed by the APC.
Since what was needed was just an adjustment and not a complete rewrite of the constitution, Basiru claimed that not even the APC state chairmen could agree on anything except that it was contradictory.
Their plan to do away with the Senate and replace it with a House of Representatives that only meets part-time was revived. That they have ceased to consider the prospect of rescinding the Constitution of 1999 is indicated by this. The Constitution of 1999, which created the House of Representatives, is being considered for potential amendments.
A constitutional amendment is presently being worked on by the National Assembly. To reduce government spending, everyone with a valid interest in doing so should draft the appropriate memorandum, gather support from members of the National Assembly and the State Assembly, and then have it changed.
Meeting with the state APC chairs, the National Working Committee went over both the broad points and the specific suggestions put out by the demonstration organisers. The headline of the demonstration, #EndBadGovernance, was astonishing to us. The message it sends is that you are planning a revolution, not just a demonstration.
“You don’t use protests for revolution, and when it happens, it’s accompanied by intense violence.” Our nation does not need bloodshed right now, and it should not derail the President’s and administration’s work. We want Nigerians to know that their government would not sit idly by while its citizens suffer needless acts of violence, he emphasised.