The founder of Afe Babalola University, Ado Ekiti, Aare Afe Babalola, SAN, has called for the introduction of a new constitution that will ensure that the country does not keep recycling failed leaders.
He said it was necessary for stakeholders to ensure that a new truly federal constitution with provision for parliamentary government to replace the 1999 constitution before the 2023 election.
Babalola said that anything to the contrary would result in “recycling the same failed leaders that have brought Nigeria to where it is today”.
He lamented that the 1999 constitution “allows Nigeria to be running the most expensive democracy in the world with government functionaries earning exorbitant salaries and allowances in a country riddled with unemployment, poverty, insurgencies, kidnapping, ferocious terrorist acts, killings, murder, robbery and widespread destruction of properties”.
The legal luminary, said one of the reasons why a new truly federal constitution must be in place is that the 1999 constitution “breeds transactional leaders instead of transformational leaders. It is the same constitution that makes the opinions of those outside government to be irrelevant to those in government.”
“Those who wish this country to remain an indivisible entity must unite to ensure that we replace the present 1999 constitution with a truly federal constitution and a parliamentary system of government which is more involving and less expensive,” he said.