Former Secretary General of the Commonwealth, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, has said that Nigeria needs a new constitution to guarantee the rights of citizens and progress of the country.
Speaking at the convocation lecture at the Afe Babalola University, Ekiti, Anyaoku described Nigeria as a country in an unprecedented level of divisiveness and declining sense of national unity.
Anyaoku lamented the multi-dimensional poverty, great insecurity, killings and kidnappings by unknown gunmen and marauding bandits in the country.
In his topic: “Management of Diversity: A Major Challenge to Governance In Pluralistic Countries”, noted that Nigeria’s diversity was more successfully managed in the early years of the country’s independence.
“But all this has changed when the military intervened in the country’s governance in January 1966 and changed the existing constitution”.
Anyaoku maintained that the regions engaged in healthy competition which facilitated rapid development across the country.
He lamented the poor state of infrastructures including power supply, road and education, health facilities.
“There is complete bastardization of our society ethical values, and an unfathomable level of corruption evident in the often reported massive looting and mismanagement of the country’s resources including the continuing unbridled theft of crude oil,” he said.
He called for a “national constituent assembly”of directly elected on a non-party basis representatives whose task would be to discuss and agree on a new constitution for Nigeria, taking into account the 1963 and the 1999 constitution and the recommendations of the 2014 national conference.
In his remark, ABUAD founder, Chief Afe Babalola, SAN, condemned the present socioeconomic situation in Nigeria.
