''One thing that is basic is that the constitution needs review because it is a man-made law which required periodic review.'' Omo-Agege NigeriaConstitution Security NationalAssembly NASS Nigeria
by the President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan. The committee, chaired by the Deputy President of the Senate, Ovie Omo-Agege, comprises eight principal officers who would serve as steering sub-committees within the larger committee, a senator from each of the 36 states of the federation and two senators each from the six geopolitical zones.
He stressed: “The reason ethnicity is so dominant in Nigerian politics today is the type of governance system. The 1999 constitution is a constitution that gives all powers to Mr. President. Section 5 of the constitution says all executive powers in Nigeria are vested in Mr. President.
Yusufari, who was part of the consulting team to the House of Representatives in a previous constitution review, attributed political acrimony and unhealthy relationship between the executive and legislature as the reasons past attempts to amend the document didn’t yield positive results. “Nigerians have every reason to exercise and/or ventilate their opinions about the exercise just the way they also reserve the right not to expect much from this Senate on the exercise considering the past experiences. But I think the present National Assembly is a bit different from the previous ones in the sense that there were a lot of antagonisms. This time around, the changes are clear. They seem to be more friendly, serious and sensitive to the national assignment.
What are your expectations from the latest efforts to review the Constitution by the National Assembly? You see, the country is blessed with several minerals resources. We have several untapped minerals resources and nobody cares, because everybody thinks the Federal Government is in charge. But we want the situation where the state government will not go to beg or wait for statutory allocation from Abuja. We want a situation where the state government will produce its resources and pay tax to the Federal Government.
In the past constitutional review, the Niger Delta states agitated for fiscal federalism. How can this be achieved when the rest of Nigeria depends majorly on earnings from oil and gas? Well, I don’t know. We have had several conferences, even in President Goodluck Jonathan’s time, before he left office. With reports from those conferences, I expected a genuine, serious government to bring all of them to the table and let the National Assembly debate on them and pass them into law. That will be better as a people’s document than what they are doing now.It seems there is a clamour for more states. I think we can create more states.
What Nigeria needs is a people-constitution. Instead of setting up another committee to waste billions of naira, the senate should debate and send a Bill, set up a Constituent Assembly and election should be conducted into the body, whose outcome must be subjected to a referendum and it becomes a constitution.
There is restructuring in the APC’s manifestos and I challenge the leadership of that party to live up to its promises. For Nigeria to continue with this type of system, where power is absolutely at the centre, will make the country implode one day. If in the next 10 years nothing is done to thinker with the current system, what could Nigeria look like?
Having said that, I will say that the first item the Constitution Review Committee should consider is that of Devolution of Power to the states. The present constitution has no character of federalism. It is a unitary form of constitution. The present constitution with about 79 powers exclusively reserved for the Federal Government makes it clumsy and authoritative. It also makes the state governments work like appendages of the Federal Government. The state government should also reduce their membership of the state Houses of Assembly to make it cost-effective and efficient in intelligence. Also, the state Houses of Assembly should be independent of the state executive.
The 13 per cent provided for in the 1999 Constitution as amended has not been increased for 20 years now. Every attempt by South-south delegates at various conferences particularly in 2005 to ensure that it is increased was opposed by northern delegates. The Universal Basic Education should be abolished. The position of the Attorney General should be separated from the office of the Minister of Justice and the Attorney General should do his duty as the Attorney General, and not be tied to the executive. There should be two Accountant Generals, one for the Federal Government and the other for the federation. The section on Federal Character should be clearly spelt out and should be compulsorily implemented.
Who said in the constitution of this country that there shall be 774 local councils? Since when did the Federal Government begin to get involved in local government matters? Babangida created local governments and gave as a dash to friends and that is why there is no uniform template for the creation. So for me, there is a need for this.
Now in 2005 when Obasanjo came in, he set up a constitution review committee; that committee came up with a marvelous document that could have pulled us out of this fraudulent 1999 constitution but Obasanjo then tried to insert into it the third term tenure, which was the selfish tendency of African leaders to perpetuate themselves in office.
I was talking about local governments; they put into our constitution a peg to the number of local governments in the country not realising that local governments are not the duty of the Federal Government. In other words, you saw Obasanjo and the Lagos State government in action and that is why we now have in our political lexicon, local government development areas.
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