Interviews

Interview with Jibo

Jibrin Ibrahim
Country Director, Global Rights and Convener of CFCR

Everything seems quiet at the constitution review level, we wonder what is happening?

Yes, things have been quiet on the constitution review for few reasons. One reason was that after the inauguration of the National Assembly, the reconstituted the co-joint National Assembly Constitutional Review Commission and they started by holding public hearing on the Judiciary where they invited people and revive Interest. After that, we then called the second meeting where they only invited members of the Executive and flew the kite about the five year, one term Presidency and gubernatorial positions, with the explicit objective of creating a basis for Obasanjo to have a third term with the state governors, and since then, they have refused to call any other meeting or do any other thing on constitutional review. So, we have an unfortunate situation in which apparently some of the leaderships of the National Assembly are trying to subvert the constitutional review process.

On the civil society front, a lot of things have been happening. The CFCR issued its model constitution which it has been working on over the past four years. At the same time, a working document that brings together all the various constitutional proposals from civil society and from Government has been prepared and these are to be used for the advocacy. A lot of letters and attempts have been made to have meetings with the National Assembly on it and they have resisted so far. In addition, there was even a proposal to have a retreat with them and they declined the proposal. So there is a lot of approach from the civil society to the National Assembly, but unfortunately there is no positive response from the National Assembly.

Does it mean that most of the things that civil society would do on constitution review are dependant on what the government does?

No, what it means is that civil society can make constitutional proposals. However, constitutional review is a prerogative of the National Assembly. Only the National Assembly has powers to review any part of the constitution. What this means is that the constitution will not be reviewed except and if and when the National Assembly does accept to review it, it is precisely because of this that a lot of efforts have been directed towards National Assembly to convince them to revive the process of constitutional review.

Now that they are not trying to move the process forward, what is civil society position?

Well, the position of the civil society is that advocacy is a continuous process, we will continue to convince them, but things have now reached a stage where if they do not act then civil society itself will have to create conditions to move this issue forward. One of the reflections of the civil society is to call for a National Conference and start the process of preparing a bill for the National Assembly to call a National Conference. In the event of their refusal, then Nigerian citizens will have to go ahead to call that National Conference to move this dossier forward.

Did CFCR have a working document, an action plan that anticipated the whole gamut of constitutional review process, what should be done at every stage?

I don’t think it is possible to anticipate a whole process at the beginning of any initiative, what you can do is to work out an action plan and then follow the action plan and revise it as you go along. The CFCR has an action plan from the very beginning and the action involves a number of stages. The first stage was the consolidation of the structures of the citizen forum itself. The second stage was substantive debates on the major problems with the constitution. The third stage was advocacy towards the National Assembly to revive the process of constitutional review. The next stage which is, I think where we are now is the release of the model constitution of the Citizen Forum as a platform for debate and then posing the question directly to Nigerians about the organization of National Conference to carry this issue forward. So that has been the action plan and that’s what we have been pursuing.

What value has the civil society added to the process of constitution review?

I think the most important value we have added to this process is making the point that the constitution is not a document that the government should make for the people, that it is a document the people make for themselves to govern their political lives. I think that point has been made repeatedly and has penetrated large sections of this country in and out of government. The second value-added that civil society has is posing the question of a constitution being a comprehensible document, a document ordinary people can read and understand. And I think that point too has been made that constitution has to be understood by ordinary people. The third value-added is on substantive issues. I think civil society has succeeded in posing a number of fundamental questions on the contents of the 1999 constitution. Its gender bias for instance is now widely accepted, as something that has to be changed. The debate on federalism has resulted in a situation in which there is consensus in this country that we must move towards what civil society call genuine federalism. And I think there is really been impacts in that Nigerians do want a deepening of federalism. The question of Resource Control has also been a debate that civil society has succeeded in impregnating the Nigerian society with. And the question of citizenship has also been something civil society has made substantive contribution.

Do you think the National Assembly is likely going to accede to some of these values you mentioned?

The argument we are making is that it is not for the government to decide what should be in the constitution but for the views of the Nigerian citizens to be imposed on the process of constitutional review. That is why a lot of our work has centered on raising debate with Nigerian citizens, with community groups, with civil society groups, on what the issues are and what positions should be adopted. What we have to understand in this country is that if the constitution is at variance with the National position on issues then it is not a constitution for Nigerians, it may be the constitution for some people in government, but that is not the purpose of a constitution.

Going through the model constitution of civil society, one gets the impression that there was no attempt to provision for civic renewal?

I am not sure I understand what civil renewal means, if it means program of civic education, I don’t think that is the purpose of a constitution. A constitution is a ground norm that gives the foundational principles on which the polity is established and operates and to that extent, what is important about the constitution is to lay the ground rules. And when these ground rules clear and they reflect the national consensus you will then have a sufficient coherence to pursue a programme of civic education that is directed at some of the ills of the country.

In addition to the issue of civic renewal how did the civil society model constitution deal with the concept of community governance?

You see, the concept of community governance is basically a non concept because it is some sort of a response to the realization of the superficiality of the democratic process we have. Democratic governance mean, citizens take political decisions and once that is the truth of the situation, it means communities and citizens are the ones governing. However, we realize that our democratic system is extremely weak and precisely because of that weakness that different sections of society now start proposing ways in which their impact on process of governance will be enhanced and that is how the notion of community governance arose. What that is saying therefore is that what is important in governance is to enhance the role citizens in the process of decision making in their societies, and citizens as we know are organized in communities, they are organized in civic associations, professional groups etc. Therefore, what is important, and what we tried to push in the model constitution, is that you need to have a system in which when powers of the executive are weakened, and are subjected to popular control because part of the reason why are have very weak citizen influence on the democratic process is that we have a structure in which the executive is extremely powerful and the legislature especially at the state level is extremely weak. Part of the weakness, is historical due to the long period of military rule and emergence of structures of and above all practices of authoritarianism. So that takes time to address. The other aspect, I think has to do more with the constitutional powers of the executive themselves which are extremely strong in our bodies and which we try to subject to more control in the model constitution.

Community governance is not just about participation but is also about community ownership and control in some extent. Where does the concept of community governance feature in the whole issue of resource control that was recommended by the CFCR?

We had a very rich debate on community governance in relation to resource control while coming up with the position of citizens’ forum. As in the Niger Delta, many of the groups have argued that resources belong to the communities. Initially we found that idea attractive, but when we interrogated the idea, we found out that in many of those communities the structures of power are affected by two fundamental characteristics. One is patriarchy and the other is the control of power by the old generation. In a situation therefore of combined patriarchy and gerontocracy proposals of community governance means handing over power to old men with the marginalization of the youths and of women continuing. We feel that is not the true nature of what community governance should be. That all citizens in the community should be part of the power game, and it is precisely because of that we said that the understanding of community governance should be located in state structures, structures of the ward, structures of the local governments and structures of the states rather than communities where traditions dictate structures of power defined by gerontocracy and patriarchy.

Can you use the civil society engagement with the constitution reform process to measure the power of civil society in this country?

I think it is difficult to take one issue to measure the power of civil society. I think civil society is very complex word. People tend to assume civil society means NGOs. Civil society is much wider than that. Civil society is organized society that is neither in the family realm nor in the state realm and therefore straddles across society.

It is therefore a vast area and I think a lot its powers have not been fully realized. However, the fact that now virtually all policy making process of the government imbibe within themselves notions of civil society consultations means a certain capacity has been established in the very power of civil society. Off course, we can nuance that power by pointing out that, well if indeed that happens, is also partly because the donor community provides funds for a lot of these consultations. But I think what is important to realize is that it has now entered the accepted principles of political and social negotiations in the country. You should always realize that in political sociology, power is not the capacity to force somebody to do something. It is much more the capacity to influence processes. And I think to a large extent civil society has been able to influence processes, is able to place issues on the political agenda, it is able to create a situation in which those issues placed in the political agenda are taken up by constituted authorities and is able to follow the process through. The power I think is still limited, the authority of the civil society is still contested to a significant extent, but you can see from the direction of development that the influence of civil society is growing.

Did civil society groups aim at using the constitution reform process to alter relations of power in favour of the ordinary people?

My assessment is that civil society has not succeeded in posing the question of ordinary people having the power to influence the process of governance. For me, that is a target for civil society, and that is the direction in which civil society is moving. But it will be a very long and uphill struggle and what we are doing in civil society is trying to increasingly introduce mechanisms that will open avenues for ordinary people to start influencing issues, for example, the Freedom of Information Bill will make it possible for ordinary people to start getting information on what is going on in governance. The various programmes on budget monitoring will gradually bring to the ordinary people both the capacity and possibilities of ensuring public resources are used in a correct manner. So, my own assessment is that we are in the beginning of that process of bringing the ordinary people in the control of the democratic and political process. It’s a long match, we have started and that is what is important.

Now in terms of capacity building for civil society, what is the significance of its engagement with the constitution review process?

I think the way in which it has enhanced the capacity of civil society, first of all is by creating the basis for a reality check. Civil society entered this process from a culture in which you simply have a meeting, criticize governments, sometimes insult the most annoying members of government and you publish in a communiqué or in a leaf-let. I think our capacity have grown increasingly by some of these engagements in which now we are devising ways of advocacy in which we reach out, we negotiate, we try to convince, and we educate and in that process you begin to arrive at a situation in which you are impacting on the process of governance rather than simply dismissing it or insulting it. And I think that increase in capacity is very significant. It is something that needs to grow. It is something that needs to advance and that I think is happening.

Now what lessons in coalition work can we draw from experience of engaging the constitution review process?

Coalition building is very necessary and it’s very difficult. It is necessary because as the NGO grows, their individual capacity become more reduced due to the large number of players. For significant issues of impact you need many like-minded groups together on specific issues. And off course, the difficulties that arises in that case is that the groups you bring together work on various issues and you are bringing them together to work on one thing in this case, constitutional review. And off course there are differences in political opinion, in methodology and approach. There is no text book on how to run a coalition; it is something you learn by doing. And the first lesson that emerges from the work of a coalition is that you must learn how to enhance the positive aspects of the coalition and relate to difficulties that arise. What you learn in that process, I think is that you are able to develop coalitions if you are able to develop principles that enhance the work of the coalition. And the principles we discovered that enhanced our work are that there must be open and transparent work, there must be full participation, the views of all must be taken into account, decisions must be taken on the basis of majority views and while consensus is a useful approach, it is not always possible to have consensus in various states. I think the most important lesson is that you move ahead on the basis of the things you agree on while you continue to work on the things you don’t agree with. I think these are the important principles that enhance the work of coalitions and we are learning more as we go ahead.

What will happen to CFCR after the constitution review process?

I work for an organization called Global Rights and the principle of Global Rights is that when Human Rights is perfectly established and we are all happy with the level of Human Rights, we dissolve the organization and enjoy the rights we have won for ourselves. It is the same with the constitution review process, the moment we have a perfect constitution that we are all happy, the work of CFCR is finished, it becomes dissolved and it enjoys the fruit of a perfect constitution.

What will be the reaction of civil society if the constitution is reviewed to perpetuate the rule of the present government?

Civil society will not accept the situation in which the constitution is changed to perpetuate the rule of the President and Governors. It will then become and open struggle and I am sure the attitude of not just civil society but of Nigerians is that we can not allow ourselves to be driven into perpetuation of authoritarianism and governors and president perpetrating their rule. In other African countries some of these attempts have been stopped. We believe we are capable of stopping it if arises in this country.