Chief Wole Olanipekun (SAN), a former President of the Nigerian Bar Association, revealed on Wednesday that former President Olusegun Obasanjo nearly punched him for recommending that the 1999 Constitution be modified while Obasanjo was still President.
Olanipekun remarked this while presenting the Olabisi Onabanjo University Convocation Lecture in Ago-Iwoye, Ogun State.
The lecture’s focus was “Mass Exodus of Human Capital in Nigeria: An Anatomical Analysis of Causes and Effects.”
Olanipekun, who called the 1999 Constitution a forgery, claimed it was to responsible for the country’s numerous problems.
“Every governor goes to Abuja now everyday and who do they go to see, directors, deputy directors. Is this federalism?
“We need a constitution with a humane face. I’m a lawyer but we are deceiving ourselves; our constitution is fake and I have said this over and over, but then as lawyers you will ask us, if we say the constitution is fake, why are we practising it?
“Lawyers and judges apply the law as it is, not the law as it ought to be; so we apply the law as we have it now and we have been pleading that we should amend the constitution, let us overhaul it. I, as President of the NBA, I led a delegation of the association to President Obasanjo in 2022; he almost boxed me.
“I am here in Ogun State and I’m saying this, he is still alive, he said, ‘No, you can’t change it’. I said, ‘Mr. President, let us seize this opportunity to do it’ and we also appeal to the powers that be now, to our President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, that the time for us to restructure this country is now. If we do not do it, these children that we have abroad might not return home, they won’t come here.”
Olanipekun said the current situation of the country was so scary that those living abroad would never come to Nigeria.
