Obasanjo opens constitutional debate, rules out secession

President Olusegun Obasanjo opened a conference to draft changes to the constitution on Monday with a warning that delegates should not question the fundamental unity of Nigeria. “The National Political and Reform Conference is not designed to dismember or disintegrate Nigeria,” Obasanjo told the 400 delegates assembled in the federal capital Abuja. “The conference is about designing the most appropriate and relevant institutional mechanisms for managing our diversity and differences,” he added. Obasanjo is a retired army general who fought as a military officer against the attempt by the Igbo people of southeastern Nigeria to form the breakaway state of Biafra in the 1967-1970 civil war. He said in his opening speech that the main aim of the present conference on constitutional reform was “to strengthen the oneness and unity of Nigeria”. The delegates have all been appointed by Obasanjo or nominated by Nigeria’s 36 state governors - 28 of whom belong to the president's ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP). They have been given three months to produce a new draft constitution. Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country, with more than 126 million people. The large Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo tribes dominate the political scene. However, Nigerians are split into more than 250 ethnic and language groups. Overlying this diversity is a deep political fault line that runs through the country, dividing the largely Muslim north from the predominantly Christian and Animist south. For much of its history since independence from Britain in 1960, Nigeria has been rocked by ethnic, religious and political upheavals, including the civil war that prevented the oil-producing southeast from seceding as an independent state of Biafra. In recent years there have been strident calls from different regions of the country for political reforms. The inhabitants of the oil-rich Niger Delta are demanding more access to oil revenues controlled by the federal government. Meanwhile, other ethnic and interest groups have demanded the devolution of more powers from central government to the regions. Many critics of Obasanjo have boycotted the present constitutional conference, protesting that it is stuffed with the government's own nominees and has been barred from discussing certain contentious issues such as secession. A coalition of opposition and pro-democracy groups have vowed to hold a parallel conference later this year to which delegates will be elected rather than nominated. Obasanjo, whose party was widely accused of rigging the 2003 general elections to secure a second term in office, dismissed the initiative as “unpatriotic strategies for precipitating crises.”