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How Taking Down The 1999 Nigeria Constitution Activates The Right To Self-Defence, And Democracy By Ndidi Uwechue

In general, communities get whatever they accept. Thus, those that tolerate corruption will have a corrupt society. While, those with zero tolerance for corruption, will get a civilised

 society. Sticking with Nigeria, that country is a failure because the people chose to accept a Unitary system that experts had told them would never work, and time has proved the experts right.

We can go back one step to see how ACCEPTING THE UNACCEPTABLE brought Nigerians to their current plight. First though, a speedy bit of history. In 1966, the military coups aborted the Federal Nigeria that people had agreed to be in. After that, the military used force of arms to create and maintain a Unitary Nigeria, disrupted only by the civilian period of Shagari which nevertheless retained a Unitary system, before the military returned with Buhari’s coup. In May 1999 Obasanjo, a retired military general, became President, sworn in under a 1999 Constitution that Nigerians had not seen! That can be taken as a first step in “accepting the unacceptable”. Later, when copies of the 1999 Constitution became available, there were few dissenting voices, for the vast majority of adult Nigerians went along with this farce. Adult Nigerians should have considered several simple things such as: Why was there just one “Constitution” when there were thirty-six federating states? They could have cast their minds back, or done the research, to the time prior to the 1966 coups when the four Regions of the time each had their own Constitutions, plus an additional one, the federating Constitution. So, again, submitting themselves to a single “Constitution” was a case of “accepting the unacceptable”.

Then, as now, the greatest culprits in leading Nigerians down the road of “accepting the unacceptable” are members of the legal profession (particularly the Bar Association, SANs and judges), plus the Church. When these two institutions do not know the purpose of their being, and have made it a matter of “making money” and taking their own share of “the national cake”, then a completely failed country is completely inevitable.



Frighteningly, “accepting the unacceptable” has brought Nigerians to now be living in perilous times. It is that illegitimate 1999 Constitution that is being used to disarm them while they face a deadly and relentless onslaught of genocide from ARMED Fulani herdsmen, “bandits”, and Islamist terrorists. 

Insightful individuals, although small in number at first, but now quickly increasing, refused the status quo condition of “accepting the unacceptable” and formed what today has become the NINAS Movement, an Alliance of indigenous peoples of the South and Middle Belt. On 16th December 2020, NINAS Movement, having Repudiated the illegitimate 1999 Constitution, declared a Constitutional Force Majeure to Decommission that document. It is actually a forgery falsely given the name “Constitution” that deceitfully states that “we the people” made it, and agreed it. When a document such as a Constitution is a forgery, it should never be accepted or defended. Once the indigenous peoples no longer “accept the unacceptable” 1999 Constitution, they destroy any power that it has over them, and thus they have TAKEN DOWN the Constitution. It is the contents, ie the words in that document that prevent Nigerians from arming themselves to fight off armed attackers, so when they say: “We do not agree with it, we will not at all accept it BECAUSE WE NEVER WROTE that 1999 Constitution”, it releases them from the bondage of (the words of) that document. They can then take up and ACTIVATE the right to self-defence that United Nations gives to all indigenous ethnic nationalities on their ancestral land.

In Nigeria’s case, the life of that illegitimate 1999 Constitution is renewed by elections when the declared winner swears an Oath of Office to uphold it over his people. Thus, TAKING DOWN the illegitimate 1999 Constitution is in effect achieved when the peoples of the NINAS Alliance Territory insist that political parties stop preparations for general elections in 2023.  Instead there would be roundtable dialogue and negotiations that will through democratic processes, and a transitioning arrangement involving Regional Referendums, end in a future that “we the people” want.

To sum it up, “accepting the unacceptable” has now placed indigenous peoples under the mortal threat of genocide from heavily-armed Fulani herdsmen and terrorists. Each time the people accept to go to elections under the illegitimate 1999 Constitution that renders them defenceless, they are actually accepting all the enslaving and oppressing conditions written in that Constitution, including being disarmed and having no control of their resources, or of their future. That “1999 Constitution” is a fake Constitution so its life should not be renewed ever again. All that the people need to do is say that they refuse to allow that forgery to hold them down to be killed, which they do by TAKING IT DOWN. That means halting preparations for general elections in 2023.

Ndidi Uwechue is a British citizen with Igbo heritage from the Lower Niger Bloc. She is a retired Metropolitan (London) Police Officer, she is a signatory to the Constitutional Force Majeure, and she writes from Abuja.

Sourced From Sahara Reporters

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