My erstwhile professor at the University of Nairobi, H.W.O. Okoth-Ogendo (RIP) in his paper The Politics of Constitutional Change in Kenya Since Independence, 1963-69, notes that “constitutional systems in Anglophone Africa have not had a happy history, especially during the last decade.
Almost without exception the independence documents have ended up in military dustbins or have undergone change so profound and rapid as to alter their value content and significance beyond recognition. Scholars trained in the Westminster tradition, who tend to view constitutions simply as “a body of rules which define and limit governmental power and regulate major political activity in the state”, have explained this phenomenon primarily in terms of the inherent inability of Africans to run constitutional systems.”
