Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy Under the Nigerian Constitution

Abstract

ONE of the significant innovations of the new Constitution is the inclusion of a chapter on Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy. Because of the novelty of that chapter, the Constitution Drafting Committee (hereafter called the CDC) considered it expedient to define what it means by and directive principles. According to the CDC: By Fundamental Objectives we refer to the identification of the ultimate objectives of the Nation whilst Directive Principles of State Policy indicate the paths which lead to those objectives. Fundamental Objectives are ideals towards which the Nation is expected to strive whilst Directive Principles lay down the policies which are expected to be pursued in the efforts of the Nation to realise the national ideals. ' The rationale for embodying these Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles in the Constitution, according to the CDC, is that Governments in developing countries have tended to be pre-occupied with power and its material perquisites with scant regard for ideas as to how society can be organised and ruled to the best advantage of all. 2 That rationale is of special relevance to the Nigerian polity whose cardinal features are hetereogeneity of the society, the increasing gap between the rich and the poor, the growing cleavage between the social groupings, all of which combine to confuse the nation and bedevil the concerted march to orderly progress. 3 Nigeria's multiethnicity and heterogeneity dictated the federal option in the first instance. Contemptuous disregard of the Federal Constitution of 1963 and flagrant violations of its fundamental guarantees resulted in what has aptly been described as the bloody holocaust which brought the nation to the edge of the precipice. The significance of the 1979 Constitution is that it is an essay on a new political contract. The Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy as contained in Chapter II of the Constitution embody the philosophy that animates this new contract: