By

John Michael Ojo

Pastor Tunde Bakare, the serving overseer of the Citadel Global Community Church (CGCC) and a one-time vice-presidential candidate to President Muhammadu Buhari, has urged the president to make dumping of the 1999 constitution for a new one his legacy.

Bakare spoke in his church in Lagos during his state of the nation broadcast on Sunday.

According to the cleric, by focusing on the zoning of offices such as the presidency instead of working to dump the 1999 constitution, the political class was dodging the main problem of the nation which is a faulty constitution.

He said that there was no correlation between where the presidency comes from and the development of that part of the country.

He said that although the North has had the lion share from the national leadership, the region still accounts for a large proportion of the nation’s poverty index.

According to him, if there were any correlation between where the president comes from and development, the northern part of Nigeria would have been the most developed region or geopolitical zone in the country today, having produced the heads of state and presidents for over forty years.

He said that despite the dominance of the North in the governance of this nation, data from the World Bank indicates that as of 2016, the North accounts for 87 per cent of the nation’s poverty index.

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Furthermore, he said that based on reports by International Centre for Investigative Reporting, the north has got key appointments in the six years of of the administration of Buhari.

The pastor noted that despite this preponderance of appointments, data shows that the North has continued to dominate the poverty line in Nigeria even during the Buhari administration.

He noted that if there were any relationship between where a president comes from and the level of development, the administration of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan would have resolved the issue of restructuring, resource management and environmental degradation and that the latest crisis in the Niger Delta as well as the economic hardship of the South-South would have ended.

He said that administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo would not have resulted in marginalisation or the freezing of the allocation of

Lagos State if all that was needed for the development of a region is the president.

He traced the lack of development to the erosion of the ancient marks laid by the nation’s founding fathers.

He therefore stressed that for a better Nigeria to emerge, the 1999 constitution must be set aside as amending it would only take the nation into a worse problem.

He begged the president to take the responsibility of giving Nigerians a better constitution which he said would give him a lasting legacy.

He said: “The problem with us is not that an ethnic group has not produced the president but the problem is that Nigerians failed to heed the warning of our founding fathers by removing the ancient landmarks which they set before us.

“The 1999 constitution has removed the ancient landmarks set by the 1960 and 1963 constitutions. This is when the rain started beating us.

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” The 1999 constitution, as amended, is nothing more than a glorified dead certificate.

“I want to call ton Mr President to stop passing the buck to the National Assembly, tear down the wall of this inhibiting constitution.”

Bakare though a friend to the president has often criticised his administration for not living to the promise he made to Nigerians during the buildup to the 2015 general election which brought him into power after several attempts.

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