Gen. Abdulsalami Explodes Myth Behind 1999 Constitution; Reveals 95% Was Copied From 1979 Civilian Text After Nigerians Rejected Abacha’s Draft

Nigeria’s longest-standing constitutional debate has been turned on its head after former military Head of State, General Abdulsalami Abubakar (Rtd), unzipped the inner workings of his 1998 transition program, flatly dismissing claims that the military or the late Justice Niki Tobi authored the current 1999 Constitution.

The historic revelations are contained within Chapter 23—titled “The Making of the 1999 Constitution”—of Abdulsalami’s newly released 264-page autobiography, Call of Duty. The book was formally presented to the public at the Aso Rock Presidential Villa in Abuja to mark the general’s 84th birthday, drawing top-tier political actors, including President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who was represented at the event by Vice President Kashim Shettima. The sudden historical clarification lands at a highly sensitive moment on the 2026 legislative calendar, arriving just as the National Assembly aggressively implements multi-billion naira review frameworks to alter or replace the supreme document.

For decades, civil society coalitions, regional socio-cultural groups like Afenifere, and legal experts have targeted the legitimacy of the 1999 Constitution, discrediting it as an artificial “military decree” forced upon the civilian population. However, writing with absolute candor, General Abdulsalami maintained that this narrative represents a complete misrepresentation of historical data logs.

The elder statesman revealed that upon taking the reins of power in June 1998 following the sudden demise of General Sani Abacha, his administration’s singular objective was to return the nation to democratic rule within the shortest possible timeframe. To achieve this without triggering fresh political friction, he inaugurated a 25-member Constitution Debate Co-ordinating Committee (CDCC), spearheaded by Supreme Court jurist Justice Niki Tobi, with Dr. Suleiman Kumo serving as deputy chairman.

Contrary to popular belief, the panel’s assignment was strictly supervisory, not creative.

“At the inauguration of the CDCC on November 11, 1998, I raised several contentious issues in the Draft 1995 Constitution left behind by the previous administration and mandated them to come up with fresh ideas,” General Abdulsalami unzipped in his autobiography. “I need to re-emphasize here that their job was not to write a new Constitution but to coordinate a nationwide debate on the existing draft. I have heard many critics say the Niki Tobi Committee was set up to write a new Constitution. That is absolutely false. No single clause was written from scratch by that panel.”

The autobiography outlines how the CDCC set up open public hearing grids across major municipal zones, including Lagos, Ibadan, Enugu, Port Harcourt, Kaduna, and Kano, receiving 405 detailed memoranda.

When Justice Tobi submitted the final report, the findings delivered what Abdulsalami describes as a “welcome relief.” The data fields showed that Nigerians across all geopolitical lines had overwhelmingly rejected the complex Abacha-era 1995 draft, demanding instead a direct reversion to the trusted 1979 Constitution of the Second Republic.

Because the 1979 document was entirely drafted by a 50-member civilian Constitutional Drafting Committee chaired by Chief F.R.A. Williams and heavily scrutinized by a 230-member elected Constituent Assembly under Justice Udo Udoma, Abdulsalami argues that 95 percent of the current 1999 Constitution is entirely civilian in its lineage.

The military’s Provisional Ruling Council simply updated the 1979 layout to capture structural shifts, such as adjusting the number of states and local councils, initializing the National Judicial Council (NJC) to shield the bench from executive overreach, and extracting the 13 percent derivation principle from the 1995 draft to safeguard the economic survival of oil-producing communities in the Niger Delta.

The former Head of State also fired a sharp rhetorical salvo at elite critics who claim the document lacks validity because it was never subjected to a national referendum. He noted that no Nigerian constitution in history including the praised 1960, 1963, and 1979 texts was ever put to a popular plebiscite, pointing out the irony that many politicians currently discrediting the 1999 framework happily ran for office and accumulated massive personal wealth under its identical 1979 predecessor.

By presenting this detailed eyewitness manual, General Abdulsalami is seeking to permanently reframe the sovereignty debate ahead of the 2027 electoral cycle.

His testimony shifts the burden of proof back onto modern agitators, maintaining that while a constitution must remain a living, alterable document, discrediting the 1999 text as a “soldier’s manual” is a historically fraudulent script used to mask deeper political failures.