A former member of the House of Representatives, Nze Chidi Duru, has said that former President Olusegun Obasanjo undermined the 1999 Constitution to enable governors hire and fire local government chairmen.
Duru, who was in the House from 1999 to 2007, disclosed this in an interview with The Nation on Sunday.
He said that Obasanjo after coming to power in 1999 hid under flimsy excuses to prevent the election of councilors and local government chairmen across the federation.
The ex-Rep maintained that while the nation’s political system needed institutional reforms, “more important is that the players in the political space come to an understanding and appreciation of the higher responsibility or the burden they bear by being elected to elective positions and help, through that, to transform Nigeria”.
Duru said, “I think that what has happened to us as a country took root in what happened in 1999/2000 when we left governance and began to play our politics.
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“And that seed was sown in 2000 and 2001 when the president and his minders constructively undermined the constitution of Nigeria with respect to the election of councillors and local government chairmen.
“The constitution was very clear that after two years, an election will be conducted and the councillors and local government chairmen in the 774 local governments of Nigeria will then be elected.
“But because of politics, he convened a National Council of State meeting where, on the pretext that the voter register was not ready and having agreed with the then Alliance for Democracy (AD) governors and some of the governors on the platform of APP that now became ANPP and then innovated a system that enabled governors to appoint councillors and local government chairmen.
Nothing could have been more fundamental and disruptive as that singular act, because the constitution of a country is the spirit that guides a country. So, if you can undermine the constitution, you can undermine any other law in Nigeria.
“So, it was very clear to people that the operators of the constitution and the people at the helm of affairs in Nigeria could willfully undermine the very basic laws or the basis on which they came to power. And the rest of the infractions that we saw from that time to 2007 up till date took root from what happened in 2001.”