Record Details

Jonathan’s Constitutional Conference in Nigeria: A reflection and a radical critique

Inkanyiso

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Jonathan’s Constitutional Conference in Nigeria: A reflection and a radical critique
 
Creator Basiru, Adeniyi S. Salawu, Mashud L.A. Arogundade, Martins A.
 
Subject — constitution; Nigerian state; referendum; hegemony; paternalism; Goodluck Jonathan
Description The process of bringing forth a constitution is as crucial and important as the constitution itself. However, while this ideal has been institutionalized in many liberal democracies, it is yet to be fully embraced in many illiberal countries. In Nigeria, the focus of this discourse, the process of constitution-making is as old as the country itself but such processes had always followed the same pattern: elite-engineered, paternalistically-driven and above all, devoid of citizens’ imprints via a referendum. It is against this backdrop that this article, in a retrospective and analytical manner, examines and offers a democratic critique ofNigeria’s most recent attempt at Nigeria’s constitutional engineering, the Jonathan’s Constitutional Conference (JCC) of 2014. It observes that President Jonathan-initiated Constitutional Conference mimicked the paternalistic character of the previous attempts at constitution-making and as such the process is not markedly different from the old. It submits that as long as the state elites, acting on behalf of the hegemonic faction of the dominant class, continue to see constitution-making as their exclusive reserve and are always willing to defend even a bad constitution, the search for a people’s constitution would continue.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor —
Date 2016-06-30
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — —
Format application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/ink.v8i1.230
 
Source Inkanyiso; Vol 8, No 1 (2016); 9 2077-8317 2077-2815
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://inkanyisojournal.org/index.php/ink/article/view/230/336
 
Coverage — — —
Rights Copyright (c) 2025 Adeniyi S. Basiru, Mashud L.A. Salawu, Martins A. Arogundade https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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