Chief Wole Olanipekun, the former President of the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA), has disclosed that former President Olusegun Obasanjo almost punched him when he advised him to amend the country’s constitution during his administration.
The Ekiti-born Senior Advocate of Nigeria was President Bola Tinubu’s lawyer at the presidential election tribunal.
Speaking at the 32nd and 33rd convocation lecture of Olabisi Onabanjo University, Olanipekun called the 1999 constitution “fake” and advocated for its total overhaul.
He recounted advising Obasanjo as the NBA president in 2022 to initiate the process of amending the constitution, but the former President rejected the advice and almost resorted to violence.
Olanipekun emphasized the need for a constitution with a humane face and urged the restructuring of the country.
“We need a constitution with a humane face. I’m a lawyer, but we are deceiving ourselves, our constitution is fake and I have said this over and over, but then you will ask lawyers that, ‘If we say the constitution is fake, why are we practising it’?
“Lawyers and judges apply the law as it is, not the law as it ought to be, so we apply the law as we have it now and we have been pleading that we should amend the constitution, let us overhaul it.
“I, as president of the NBA, I led a delegation of the association to President Obasanjo in 2022, he almost boxed me, I’m here in Ogun State and I’m saying this, he is still alive, he said ‘No you can’t change it’, I said Mr. President, let us seize this opportunity to do it.
“We also appeal to the powers that be now, to our president, Bola Ahmed Tinubu that the time for us to restructure this country is now if we do not do it, these children that we have abroad might not return home, they won’t come here”, Olanipekun said.
