Pin in the Haystack: Tracking Process and Discovering Nigerian Values in the Nigerian Constitution

Abstract

Though democracy was restored in Nigeria in 1999 following several years of military rule, its citizens are still searching for what they call a “peoples” constitution. The search has been both arduous and frustrating. In the years following the transition to civil rule, hopes were raised that a constitutional process driven by the Nigerian people would be implemented to the end that their hopes for a participatory constitution-making process is realized. In this article, it is argued that the Nigerian constitution of 1999 does not contain any values that could be said to be peculiar to Nigeria given her social and political history; hence the Nigerian people have difficulty connecting to it. Secondly, I argue that those peculiar Nigerian values are not present in the constitution because Nigerians who know what those values are were not involved in the process that produced the constitution. I therefore conclude that Nigerians will not end the clamor for a peoples constitution until they become involved in the process of producing one. On-going attempts to reform the 1999 constitution should therefore take this into account if those charged with the process ever hope to produce a document that would be sustainable over time.