Ghana also had her own experience under president Jerry Rawlings who came to power as a military ruler after a coup on December 31, 1981. He later transformed himself into a civilian president in L992 and was only tactically forced to leave twenty years after he bulldozed his way into the political scene of his country. President Gnasingbe Eyadema who came to power througir a coup int967 performed the same political experiment in Togo. Sergeant Samuel Doe became President in Liberia and Years after his ignominious exit, his country is still reeling in the mess he left behind.
The likes of Yayah Jameh of Gambia, Blaise Compaore of Burkina Faso, tejan Kabbah of sierra Leone, Tandja Mamadou and other rulers in the region did not behave differently. More saddening was the case of cote d'Ivoire - a country that has experienc-ed absolute peace since it attained independence from France in 1960 - where General Guei and his co-coupists over- threw the democratic government of President Henri Koran Beddie in the year 2OOO.
Based on the fact that military lords cannot be subservient to civil authority, there has been the rule of force as opposed to the rule of law in these countries. As a matter of fact, maladministration is a common experience and the successive civilian governments have not fared better.
Therefore, from political imbroglios to economic collapse, social problems to ethno-religious upheavals, the people are groaning in pains.
The three-day Sub-Regional Conference on Constitution-alism and State Reconstmction in West Africa was an attempt by the cornmittee for the Defence of Human Rights(COUifl to proffer a workable solution to these myriad of problems that hive made citizenship a risky venture in the region. The Conference was held in Abuja, the capital City of Nigeria between September 13 and 15, 2O0O. It drew participants from human rights bodies and civil society groups, trade-unions, academic coirmunities professional associations as well as political parties in all the countries in the region. Resource persons, well groomed in the art of using the constitution as an instrument of social re-engineering were drawn from different parts of the globe. The opening remarks of senator Ibrahim Mantu, the Deputy senate President in Nigeria who was the chairman of the occasion and Professor Julius Ihonvbere set the tune for the exciting debates which characterised all the sessions. Ambassador yussuf Mamman, chairman of the Nigerian constitution Review committee was there to state his own case. Those present narrated the constitutional experiments in their countriesind the Eriterian situation became a point of reference. All the people present came into the conclusion that the process of constitution-making in the West African sub-region is fundamentally flawed.
A play staged by Optimom Arts Konsotiom, a Nigerian-based theatre outfit presented the sorry pictures ofthe theatre of absurdity in the sub-region and it all bogged down to one thing experimentation with disintegration. A conclusion was reaclied that the drift into abyss must be halted while a reconstruction exercise must start in earnest.
This book is the product of the parley. However, it must be established that the papers are not presented in this book in the order ofpresentation at the conference. Rather, they have been minimally edited and re-arranged to pave way for smooth reading.