Former Governor of Bayelsa State, Senator Seriake Dickson, has alleged that former president Olusegun Obasanjo, did not know the content of the 1999 Constitution when he took office.
Senator Seriake Dickson said the 1999 Constitution was a fraudulent document from the military regime that has stalled the country’s growth.
The chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) explained that Nigeria needs a people’s oriented constitution. He stated that the argument for a new constitution for the country was right.
The Bayelsa West Senator said this on Thursday, in an interview with Arise TV.
“This country needs a people’s constitution, a constitution that emanates from the people, a constitution that will lay the groundwork for unity.
“The constitutional foundation, the superstructure is what determines even the economic structure that will build on it, the political systems that will build on it, the legal system, and then dealing with the overriding issue of integration and cohesion in this country. We believe that the existing constitution is not a people’s constitution.”
He argued that all political officeholders in 1999 did not know what was contained in the constitution. The former governor of Bayelsa added that Obasanjo knew the content of the constitution after he took office.
Dickson decried that the military leaders kept every Nigerian in the dark about the constitution. He maintained that the 1999 Constitution cannot be corrected by the amendment process.
“It didn’t emanate from the people. The 1999 constitution has been severely amended. It started as a decree, a decree of the military government.
“In fact, it was so bad that in 1998, 1999, when this democratic dispensation came in, even the political players and I was a state chairman at that level, didn’t even have an idea what the constitution looked like. I mean it was that bad.
“The Constitution was promulgated to take effect from when President Obasanjo, who was elected president, took his oath of office. And that was when the Constitution, everybody read it and then saw what it looked like.
“Everybody was kept in the dark. So a number of people have forgotten that unfortunate development. I’m not sure even President Obasanjo, as well as the 36 state governors in 1998, who stood elections on the provisions that were made by a military decree, the transition decree knew.
They didn’t even know the nation extent of the powers that they were going to have. In other words, What we call as a constitution today was actually a military decree.
“The people never really played any role in the making of what we now call the 1999 Constitution. Actually, a lot of us have the view that it is a fraudulent document. And you can’t fault it.
“Because when in the preamble it says, we the people. It wasn’t the people. It was the military government at the time with a few people,” Senator Dickson said.
