Renowned constitutional lawyer, Prof Ben Nwabueze yesterday in Enugu while briefing newsmen on the activities of the Concerned Igbo Leaders of Thought which he leads, repeated his advice to Mr President, saying that in the light of the crisis just at the rumours of his intentions, he had the opportunity to become a hero by not going for another term.
“I’ve advised him to please, please try and be a hero and a statesman and forget 2015, that the day you announce to Nigerians that you are not going to stand for election in 2015, you will become an instant hero.
“You cannot combine two things at the same time. We have a national conference which is clearly a mobilisation for national transformation without bloody revolution and of course the general election.
“I said to him you have to mobilise Nigerians for this transformation through the conference and you are also planning to mobilise the people to vote for you in 2015. You can’t combine the two. I stand by my advice. I will continue to stand by my advice,” the elder statesman noted.
He also spoke of a letter written to Mr Preisdent by Ndigbo of the South-east Nigeria, asking him to reject the recommendations of the Presidential Advisory Committee (PAC) for the proposed National Conference led by Senator Femi Okunroumu. The professor refused to make the letter public for the sake of courtesy.
He said the recommendations by Senator Okunroumu went against the recommendations they made during their visit to Mr President on the 29th of August 2013, and the three demands they advocated that the national conference cater to.
He said, “we want a conference that will adopt a suitable new constitution embodying re-negotiated terms and conditions on which the diverse ethnic groups comprised in Nigeria should live together in peace, security, progress, prosperity, general wellbeing and unity as one country under a central government, the result of whose deliberations will be integrated into the existing 1999 constitution.
“The conference we are demanding is the conference for the adoption of a new constitution for Nigeria not the one whose deliberations will be integrated. The 1999 constitution is one only in a loose sense not in a strict sense of the original act of the people.
“The original act of the people is that we have never had a constitution right from the colonial era. After all these years, we said the people of the country as a sovereign people should be given the opportunity to adapt a constitution for themselves.
“Particularly for the Igbos, we need to sit with other ethnic groups to renegotiate the terms and conditions upon which we shall live together. The conference of ethnic nationalities making up the Nigerian state as a pivot or focal point, not a conference of individual Nigerians as autonomous entities or of interest groups,” he said.
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