Reform Judiciary, Constitution, Agbakoba Tells Jonathan

Davidson Iriekpen

4 May 2011

President Goodluck Jonathan has been enjoined to seize the moment of his pan Nigerian mandate and take the bold step of initiating both constitutional and judicial reforms to set the country permanently on the path to greatness.

Speaking in Lagos Tuesday during an interactive session with newsmen for a post election appraisal, Lagos lawyer and legal luminary, Chief Olisa Agbakoba (SAN) summarized the recent victory recorded by Jonathan saying”never in history has one man received a huge mandate from Nigerians.”

He said with the successful conduct of the National Assembly elections where winners and losers have emerged, “the new National Assembly would be more balanced, robust and in a better position to stimulate more debate for national cohesion. The moment has now come for the President to initiate a pragmatic approach to produce a new constitution.

“From the crisis that rocked the northern part of the country after the polls, it has become clearer that unity remains a key challenge in Nigeria. We must therefore recognize our fault lines which are majorly ethnicity and religion and embrace a concept of federalism,” he stated.

Agbakoba was emphatic in stressing that “we must manage our internal contradictions through a new constitution and that should be done through the President convoking a constitutional conference “which would adopt the six geo-political zone power rotations as key concept.”

According to him, “to move forward, The President must begin a deliberate democratization of judicial institution. This is paramount for the sake of removing the current insularity that breeds corruption and ineptitude. The reforms in the judicial system are important so that confidence in the judicial system eroded by several controversial judgments and the headship should also be a Jega type of person.”

AllAfrica – All the Time