Jonathan’s Constitutional Conference in Nigeria: A reflection and a radical critique
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Date
2016-01
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Zululand
Abstract
The process of bringing forth a constitution is as crucial and important as the constitution itself. However, while this
ideal has been institutionalized in many liberal democracies, it is yet to be fully embraced in many illiberal
countries. In Nigeria, the focus of this discourse, the process of constitution-making is as old as the country itself
but such processes had always followed the same pattern: elite-engineered, paternalistically-driven and above all,
devoid of citizens’ imprints via a referendum. It is against this backdrop that this article, in a retrospective and
analytical manner, examines and offers a democratic critique ofNigeria’s most recent attempt at Nigeria’s
constitutional engineering, the Jonathan’s Constitutional Conference (JCC) of 2014. It observes that President
Jonathan-initiated Constitutional Conference mimicked the paternalistic character of the previous attempts at
constitution-making and as such the process is not markedly different from the old. It submits that as long as the
state elites, acting on behalf of the hegemonic faction of the dominant class, continue to see constitution-making as
their exclusive reserve and are always willing to defend even a bad constitution, the search for a people’s
constitution would continue.
Description
Peer reviewed article published under Inkanyiso journal, Volume 8 Number 1, Jan 2016, p. 79 –87
Keywords
constitution, Nigerian state, referendum, hegemony, paternalism, Goodluck Jonathan
Citation
Basiru, A.S., Salawu, M.L. and Arogundade, M.A., 2016. Jonathan’s Constitutional Conference in Nigeria: A reflection and a radical critique. Inkanyiso: Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 8(1), pp.79-87.