By Eric Teniola 

Till he died on December 9, 2009, Dr Ibrahim Tahir held the title of Talba Bauchi. It is not the title he is remembered for but his intellectual contributions on events and issues. Tall, big and imposing just like his cerebral ideas, he was outstanding and brilliant.

I used to read his articles in The New Nigerian Newspapers before 1975 when he became a member of the Constitutional Drafting Committee.

Dr. Tahir was then a Senior lecturer at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. In the Constitution Drafting Committee, he was a member of the sub-committee on the judicial system headed by Alhaji Nuhu Bamali, who was once Nigerian Foreign Minister.

Other members of the sub-committee at that time were Chief Richard Osuolale Abimbola Akinjide, who later became Nigeria’s Minister of Justice, Mr. Paul R.V. Belabo, legal adviser to the New Nigerian Development Company in Kaduna, Alhaji S.M. Liberty, the then Attorney General of Borno State and Professor Obaro Ikime, then Professor of History and Head of Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan.

I formed a cordial relationship with Dr. Tahir, when he represented Bauchi/Alkaleri in the Constituent Assembly in 1977.

Dr. Tahir was an orator and gifted in the delivery of ideas. If you knew him closely, you would never get tired of listening to him. On December 14, 1977, he addressed the Constituent Assembly on the need to return to Parliamentary System of Government. Now that we are discussing on the amendment of the 1999 Constitution, his views of 1977 are still very relevant.

He declared on that day “Mr Chairman, Sir, this is a Debate on the principles of the Draft Constitution and the Decree establishing the Constituent Assembly empowers this House to take whatever decision it likes on the future constitutional form and structure of this country.

“I am saying this, Mr. Chairman, in preamble because I would like to draw the attention of the House to the first principle of all.

“I believe that until the representatives of the people decide in favour one way or the other, the 1963 Constitution still remains the only legitimate Constitution of Nigeria.

“By extension, I would also like to remind the honourable members of this house about the issue of constitutionalism itself. I am saying this, Mr Chairman, because it seems that we are likely to forget that the major and the most fundamental principles of Constitutionalism in all free democratic societies such as we are privileged to be, there can be only one source and one source only for the Constitution of the country; and, that source must be the will of the people, either directly expressed by themselves in a referendum or through their freely elected representatives.

ALSO READ: ‘I found multiple stab wounds on Ataga’s body’

“I have no doubt, Mr. Chairman, that we are that group of men who are the elected representatives of the people and, therefore, we should shirk no responsibility whatsoever in saying whatever has to be said in order to keep with the spirit of the Administration itself…that the buck in Nigerian political history must stop somewhere.  Turning now to the main theme of my discussion which is still the fundamental principles and that is the theme of this debate of the Draft Constitution; I am happy to note as a member of the CDC that whatever else may or may not have occurred, the fundamental features except one, of this Draft Constitution, are in keeping with the 1963 Constitution.

“We are committed to unity as such there is no secession clause but regrettably somebody has asked for one. We are committed to the recognition of the fact that we are a plural society and on this basis we are committed to Federalism. We are committed to equality before the law, justice and most important of all, we are committed to freedom. The major features of the Draft Constitution, Sir, elaborates on this and other principles in the 1963 Constitution except one.

“Mr Chairman, I would like to submit that when the time comes there are particular clauses in the general features of the Constitution over which I would like to see some further modification. I will not tarry further but will proceed to my main business. Mr. Chairman, Sir, I would like to follow the Draft Constitution as it is presented. “I would like first to take the two chapters which are of general importance and which relate to Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy and Fundamental Human Rights. I have followed the debates on them. The issues appear to be reduced to whether they are justiciable and whether justiciable or not, they do not provide the basis for future instability and unnecessary political wrangling.

“Finally, whether or not it is realistic to expect any government anywhere in the world to meet those objectives without jeopardising other fundamental things; I believe, Sir, that the issue really is that there are two fundamentals which are in conflict. If you have Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy you can not presume a multi-party democratic society.

“If you have Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles which are taken as given and binding, you cannot also have a chapter on Fundamental human rights because subjects on which Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles on State Policy refer are also subjects which fundamental human rights deal with. If you have a free multi-party political system, then in my view this House ought not to consider resolving this particular issue. 

I also believe, Sir, that the aims of Nigeria are being defeated by insistence on things which we simply have created as a result of historical accident. 

We have public utilities in this country simply because in the forties when Nigeria was really taking shape the party in power in Britain happened to be a socialist party. Today if you examine the records of all the public utilities you will find that they have been simply conduits for the wastage of enormous resources. I know that this does not have to be so. Mr. Chairman, Sir, I would now proceed to the next issue which is the question of the form of the Executive. The House should remember that the Executive is not really the issue at all. The Executive is only one part of the political system, that is the part that changes under circumstance; but the nation, the State is entirely different and it goes on regardless of whoever is in power.

It is my humble submission, Sir, that the State is exposed to vulnerability when, for whatever reason, we decide to merge these two and at the same invite political tension and political competition on the basis of ideas.

“Mr. Chairman, Sir, the Senate becomes vulnerable because every minute there is a major political dispute; it becomes not a question of politics and administration but a question of the fundamental structure and existence of the State.

“We are all aware of our past history. I would like to submit, Mr. Chairman, Sir, that if you examine the provision on the nature of the Executive and you link it with making the State a person , a partisan political person, Mr Chairman, you would discover that this form of Executive is not only anti-populist but it is anti-democratic. It is not only anti-democratic, Sir, although it drives power into the hands of just one man, away from the elected representatives of the people and actually into the hands of the machinery, not of the political executive, but of the administrative executive. In other words into the civil service and the agencies of government.

“What I would like, Sir, is for the constitution to revert, Sir, in its fundamental feature to the recognition of this and this alone—that the Executive authority in this country should be vested directly not in a watch-dog role but in the hands of the freely elected representatives of the people who must operate under the principle of collective responsibility within a freely elected Parliament which votes a cabinet under a Prime Minister who is not himself. Mr. Chairman, Sir, honorable Members of the House, we are Nigerians and I do notice one thing about us. Under certain conditions which all too often recur in Nigeria, we say ‘yah’ to this and when the result begin to show people turn around and say, ‘ah, but that is not what we meant; but they did not stop to say what they really wanted. So, Mr. Chairman, it is as well for the House to hear at least and be silent I hope and hear, if they disagree, it is not a sin; that is what democracy is all about.

“So, Mr Chairman, Sir, collective responsibility, power given to a freely elected Parliament, the Cabinet operating as in Parliamentary democratic systems only as the expression of the will of Parliament and the Prime Minister is only a leader among equals in his Cabinet with every man being able to take a different position. Mr. Chairman, I recognize that there is a great deal of attraction and the main attraction really about this Executive Presidential thing is that we should have a member each, at least, from every State of the Federation. Parliamentary Democracy, Sir, does not negate this, and I support this provision but under a parliamentary democratic system. There is nothing in parliamentary democracy which says that the Prime Minister must appoint people from winning party. It does not.

READ ALSO: Of Amarachi and Suwebat: Beyond Sanwo-Olu’s lamentations

“So, in that sense, Mr. Chairman, I would like to see that particular provision entrenched under a parliamentary system. I would also like to see a parliamentary model, Sir, in which the tyranny of the party majority, which is the real weakness of the system, is removed by guaranteeing the life of Parliament so that as in the President model bills, when defeated, are taken back by the government, rethought in accordance with the criticisms of the House and represented, and no one should be able to dissolve Parliament at any time. It should go on under a provision in the constitution for a specified term.

“This means, Sir, even, the question of which party you belong to in the country no longer seems to matter and the whole business of group identity begins to die and one begins to associate on the basis of ideas and ideas alone. Also, Sir, I do believe that reverse will be the case in Executive Presidential system”.

He went further to propose an amendment in the constituent assembly on January 10, 1978 during plenary session.

He declared on that day “My name is Ibrahim Tahir and I am representing Bauchi/Alkaleri Constituency, Bauchi State. I beg to move the motion standing in my name on the Order Paper as follows: That this House resolves to amend Chapter VI, Title and Section 109, Sub-section (1)-(3) as proposed and to accept the consequential Amendment to the relevant sections of the same Chapter; an further resolves that the Constitution of Nigeria shall reflect a Parliamentary form of government with such other modifications as the House may decide.

“Mr. Chairman, Sir, I would like, before speaking on the substance of the Motion, to point out that it has been suggested in various circles that an Amendment of this nature would imply starting the whole work of drafting the Constitution again and that it would take another year. I hold that, in all humility, to be an untruth because the import of what I am proposing is merely an Amendment of the various Sections of the 1963 Constitution which has an imperfect parliamentary character to conform more specifically with the parliamentary democratic form of government.

“Doing this, Mr Chairman, will not take this House more than three weeks if this Amendment is accepted. Mr. Chairman, Sir, I begin by asking the House to amend the title to read, The Government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, for the following reasons which will form part of my main arguments. The title is the Executive. Mr Chairman, Sir, in the sort of democracy that the Draft Constitution proposes to commit to Nigeria, the notion of a separate institution called the Executive is a contradiction. The fact, Mr. Mr. Chairman, is that in a democracy the right to govern is an indivisible good which belongs to all of the people in the country. So, when you extract a principle called the Executive, you are, in fact, splitting the people’s will.

“The only way, in my view, that you can properly conduct democratic government is to reflect in the structure of the government itself the very principle that the will of the people is collective and indivisible. To that extent, therefore, what we should address ourselves to is the Government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria rather than an institution within the Government called the Executive. In point of fact, Mr. Chairman, the notion of the Executive is itself, to a certain extent, not more than legal fiction and merely an administrative instrument and should not, in my view, be extracted in this way  and be created as a separate institution for which the Constitution should provide.

“In any case, Mr Chairman, it seems to have escaped the Members of this House that the concept of the Executive, as far as we know , in the evolution of democratic government originated in a situation in which the countries of Europe, whose institutions  we are copying , were ruled by absolute monarchs. It was this absolute monarchy which in the political philosophies of that time, notably the ideas of John Lock, who was indeed the first man to propose it, led to the concept that there should be the doctrine of separation between the Executive, the judiciary and the Legislature. He did so precisely because, at that time in history, democracy itself had not fully evolved and kings ruled with absolute power.

“They appointed the Judges and they made the laws and a limited franchise allowed the people to have some kind of expression of their will. To that extent, Mr. Chairman Sir, when you extract the Executive all you are doing is really proposing that Nigeria becomes a diluted absolute monarchy rather than a democracy.  I wish also to point out to the Members of this House that the first ever Presidential Constitution which pretends to democracy is the Constitution of the United States of America and it is quite clear that the Constitution makers of the United States of America, at that point in their history , when they broke away from the rule of King George III, simply took the Constitution of England in the 18th Century and married it with the Constitution of Imperial Napolionic France and produced their Presidential Constitution.

“So, Mr. Chairman, there thus seems to be sufficient ground to argue that, in point of fact, this proposal is a proposal for a return to the 18th Century Monarchial Europe rather than 20th Century Democratic Government. Mr. Chairman, hon. Members of the House, under a proper democracy— and democracy did not attain its full expression until the adoption of universal franchise in 1941 in the United Kingdom followed by the rest of Europe—the right to govern is not the property of any one institution save the people, as segregated in the body of their representatives in the House of Parliament and it is the expression of this will that allows a group among Parliamentarians to represent the rest of the Parliament and, through them, the people to conduct the affairs of the community.

“To that extent, therefore, if we are committed to democracy and we hold the freedom that we pretend to support in other Sections of the Draft Constitution, we cannot do anything other than to revert  to full blown democracy and not to have an elected monarch with a chained Parliament. Mr Chairman, furthermore, it is my humble opinion that far from meeting the good intentions which the proponents of this form of government advocate, in point of fact, Sir, this proposal will, in fact, make the situation worse because all it is, Sir, is a recipe—looking at it very carefully, you will see that it is a situation of conflict in situ— and what seems to beclouding the minds of most of us is the fact that the thing is only on paper, it has not yet been thrown out among the masses of this country, the institutions themselves have not taken root and matters have not come to them yet. I submit that there are a number of areas of conflict— the conflict, first of all, is between the President and the Vice-President.

“According to those who operate this system and operated it longer than us, The Vice-President is not worth a pitcher of spit, to quote Lydon Johnson.

“If as some people have been proposing, the Vice-President should have his own position and his own sanction, all you are going to do, Sir, is either not to create the useless office whose incumbent is going to be frustrated and you will create a constitutional assassin for some people’s proposal from elsewhere or that you are going to make two power nights, the Vice-President and the President, and this places us right where we started. Secondly, there is a situation of conflict between the President and his Cabinet on the one hand and Legislative Houses on the other.

ALSO READ: Hanifa: Prime suspect recants as Kano re-arraigns him, 2 others

“I do not wish to detract from the obvious political maturity of the people of this country and certainly not the members of this House. However, I put it to the House, with all humility, that I do not see how we can avoid in this structure of government a situation in which all powers, all patronage and all the capacity to affect situations are put in a box called the Executive and those who are supposed to tell the Executive and those who are supposed to tell the Executive what to do, who do so in part, at the sufferance of the Executive, will not fight with great vehemence in order to ensure that they retain what semblance of credibility which the population and this country, in this provision, seek to accord them.

“There is yet another area of conflict, Mr. Chairman. In a parliamentary democratic system of government there exists the position of every institution—what I call the core institutions of stability, the bureaucracy, civilian, military, the Police, et cetera and those who have the mandate of the people to govern— and these people are Executives a definite, well-defined place which gives room for no ambiguity whatsoever. A Permanent Secretary in a Ministry in a parliamentary democracy knows exactly the beginning and the end of his role as a protector of the public interest as the chief adviser to the Minister. In this particular form of government, Mr. Chairman, an appointee Minister and a career bureaucrat are but two contending bureaucrats in the same role and in the same function”.

Vanguard News Nigeria