Southern Nigeria and Middle-Belt leaders under the aegis of Nigerian Indigenous Nationalities Alliance for Self-Determination (NINAS) have presented a list of demands for their continued stay in the country.
NINAS opined that members are at the receiving end of a vicious ethnic cleansing by the Fulani herdsmen.
According to The Guardian, the forum made this known on Wednesday, March 17, at a world press conference at New Bodija, Ibadan, Oyo State.
Chairman of NINAS, Prof. Banji Akintoye, and other leaders of the group, comprised of indigenous nations and people of southern and Middle-Belt of Nigeria, complained of injustice in the country and contradictions in the polity and 1999 Constitution.
The NINAS chairman said: “In the invocation of our long-suppressed collective sovereignties, we hereby proclaim a constitutional force majeure, effective from midnight of 16th of December 2020, with a 90-day notice to the government of the federation of Nigeria, Security Council of the United Nations, the government of United States of America, European Union as well as the international community, of the intention of the peoples of the alliance territories to reconsider our continued allegiance to the disputed 1999 Constitution as well as the unitary union of death, attrition and backwardness it foists on us”.
NINAS, therefore, demanded the following:
1. The federal government should formally announce and acknowledge the “constitutional grievances and sovereignty dispute” declared by the peoples of the south and the Middle-Belt.
2. A formal commitment by the government to wholesale decommissioning and jettisoning of the 1999 Constitution.
3. An announcement suspending further general elections under the disputed 1999 Constitution.
4. A formal invitation to South and Middle-Belt people to work out a transitional authority, which shall specify the modalities for the transitioning process.
5. A formal initiation of a time-bound transitioning process to midwife the emergence of fresh constitutional protocols by a two-stage process.
