Activist Calls For Review Of 1999 Constitution

A woman activist in the Niger Delta, Ann Kio-Briggs, has decried the 1999 Constitution as a set of military decrees built on falsehood and deceit and called for a Sovereign National Conference to review it holistically.

Speaking during an interview with The Tide at the Port Harcourt International Airport, Omagwa, Kio-Briggs said the constitution, which was put together in 1999 before the President Olusegun Obasanjo regime, was built on falsehood because Nigerians did not sit together to put it down.

As people from diverse areas that make up the nation, the woman activist noted that it was necessary for us now to sit down and put our views and decisions together and agree on how to live and use our resources.

“There are too many people in Nigeria, there is nothing like one Nigeria. As an Ijaw woman, I cannot claim to be a Hausa or Yoruba person. It’s just that we can live together, so we have to agree on how we can live together and there must be a set of rules”, she stressed.

On the conference, the people of Niger Delta and other geo-political zones can decide whether others can come to take their resources, Kio-Briggs maintained and urged the Federal Government to as a matter of urgency arrange for a convocation of a Sovereign National Conference.

According to her, issues such as the six years one tenure proposed by President Goodluck Jonathan and other national matters can be tabled for general discussion and debate before decisions are taken, saying that the situation where somebody who did not perform well was allowed a second term was absurd.

She urged Nigerians to keep faith with the President Jonathan-led administration, and reminded the leadership that the people expect them to deliver their election campaign promises, adding “Nigerians are expecting what you should deliver. There is a lot of deceit from government. The Senators take millions of naira doing nothing.

They sit in the House by 10 to 11 am and they go”.

Shedie Okpara