From Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja
Tempers rose in the House of Representatives last Thursday. It was a special sitting for consideration of the harmonised report of the Special Ad-hoc Committee on Review of the 1999 constitution ( as amended).
The members of the Green Chamber, many of whom have not attended plenary for a long time, had turned out en masse. In all there were 295 members in attendance that fateful day.
The exercise was characterised by drama and intrigues, just as tension enveloped the chamber while the exercise lasted.
To underscore the importance of the exercise, the House had spent the greater part of the day before, test running the electronic voting device to be used. But just as the test run of the e-voting device was going on Wednesday, a member from Jigawa State, Mohammed Kazaure was circulating a document containing instructions on how members should vote.
When the speaker, Yakubu Dogara got wind of the development, he disowned the document, saying the leadership of the House didn’t have any knowledge of it and did not sanction it.
The speaker admonished the lawmakers to be guarded properly, as they bear the “weight “ of their entire constituents, while the House as a whole bear the weight of the entire country.
The list seen by Daily Sun suggested a ‘No’ vote for overriding presidential assent on bills, the “Not Too Young To Run”, and the separation of the office of the Attorney-General from that of the minister of Justice among other issues.
Indications that Thursday’s proceeding would be interesting emerged very early in the day. The speaker, had hardly called on the chairman, Rules and Business, Emmanuel Orker -Jev to move a motion for the House to revert to the Committee of the Whole for the consideration of the report when a member from Osun State, Professor Mojeed Alabi, raised a point of order.
Citing Order 9, rule 2(1) of the House rule, and Section 9 of the constitution, Alabi opposed the consideration of the report without debating it first.
“If you proceed the way you want to proceed today, it will be a violation of order 13 rule 1.sub rule 2. During debate every member must be allowed to come to contribute to debate,” the lawmaker told Dogara.
However, Dogara explained that debates on the various bills had been done when they were passed to Special Ad-hoc Committee on the Review of the Constitution.
He said:”We are in a clause by clause consideration of the report. Debates have been done. Public hearing has been done. Reports has been laid, at no point did you raise any issue. Nigerians are waiting. We promised them that this will be ready before we go on recess”.
Apparently incensed by Alabi’s comments, the Deputy Speaker, who is also from Osun State expressed regret that an Osun man wants to stall a process presided over by another Osun man.
In no time the House became very rowdy. When normalcy returned after several minutes, Alabi obviously infuriated by Lasun’s remarks sought to raise another point of order.
But Speaker admonished the Osun lawmaker not do anything that will derail the process
“I want to counsel you. You know you are my friend and I respect you. I don’t want any Jega- Orubebe scenario here”, Dogara told Alabi. At this point, the Osun lawmaker put down his hand.
At the end of the consideration of the report of the Special Ad-hoc committee on the Review of the 1999 Constitution, the House okayed 27 bills seeking to alter different aspects of the constitution, while it threw out six.
However, the outcome of the exercise has been eliciting comments as to what ends the alteration would serve. This is because not a few think that the country would have benefitted more from those bills that were rejected.
Dashed hopes
The outcome of the constitution review exercise in the House dashed the hopes of many Nigerians for a restructuring of the polity in the near future.
In recent time, calls for the restructuring of the country have been on the front burner of national discourse, with the proponents describing it as the panacea to the myriad of problems confronting the country presently.
A few days before last Thursday, Dogara promised that the constitution review exercise would address the issue of restructuring, stating that restructuring could only be actualised through constitution amendment exercise.
Speaking at a public hearing of the Ad-hoc Committee on Review of the Constitution, the speaker had said:”Agitations for restructuring of the Governance framework for Nigeria can only be done through alteration of the constitution”.
However, the Green Chamber apparently taking a cue from the Senate rejected the bill on devolution of powers to states.
Although 210 members voted in support of the bill, 71 members voted against it, thus making the votes fall short of the constitutionally required 240 votes to alter any section of the constitution by the House of Representatives.
The upper legislative chamber had thrown out the bill on devolution of power, the day before with 90 votes against five on Wednesday.
Analysts say if the power devolution bill had scaled through , it would have helped to engender true federalism and address calls for restructuring the country.
Former Vice President, Abubakar Atiku described the rejection of the devolution of power bill by the National Assembly as a betrayal of the All Progressives Congress (APC) pre-2015 election promises.
Atiku, who is also a leader of the APC noted that although “restructuring is no panacea to all our nation’s problems, devolving resources and responsibilities from an overbearing, unresponsive, and ineffective Federal Government to the states is the first step we must make if we are serious about putting our nation back on track, and our people back to work.”
Similarly, pan Igbo organisation, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, faulted the rejection of the bill.
According to the President General, Chief John Nnia Nwodo: “the barrage of voices in this country lately shows clearly that majority of Nigerians are desirous of the country running a true federal system and one expected the Senate to have appreciated this in all their actions especially in constitutional amendment.”
Apart from the devolution of power bill, another rejected bill that analysts say would have been very beneficial to the country was the bill seeking to remove the State Independent Electoral Commissions (SIEC) from the constitution.
Although the House voted for local government autonomy and abrogation of the state-local government joint accounts, its rejection of the deletion of SIECs from the constitution makes the proposed autonomy for councils ineffectual.
Since the inception of the present democratic dispensation, the only local government election that has passed the objectivity test was the one conducted by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in 1998.
All the subsequent council polls conducted by the SIECs have been mere coronation where the party in control at the various states wins virtually all the seats in Councils’ polls.
Pundits have also argued that with the conduct of council elections still under purview of the SIECs, nothing was likely to change in the administration of the local government areas.
The positives
Perhaps the most popular of all the bills passed is the Not too young to run, which is intended to lower the minimum age for elective offices in the country.
The bill which was passed by 261 votes to 23, seeks to lower the minimum age for contesting for the office of the President from 40 to 35 years, Governorship 35 to 30 years, Senate 35 to 30 years, House of Representatives 30 to 25 years and state House of Assembly from 30 to 25 years.
However, the passage of the Not too young to run bill did not go without a drama.
Shortly before votes on the not too young to run bill was taken, the majority leader, Femi Gbajabiamila admonished lawmakers to be properly guided.
He noted that “this is one bill, I have to appeal to my colleagues that we have to feel the pulse of the nation.”
As he was still speaking, the House became rowdy as lawmakers sympathetic to the bill stood up from their seats and started chanting “not too young, not too young, not too young”. As they chanted they displayed flyers about the bill, which had be distributed in the chamber earlier in the day.
When normalcy returned after several minutes, Dogara appealed to the lawmakers to forgive and forget whatever anyone has said to inflame passion, so that the bill could sail through in the interest of the young people who they want to empower.
“No matter whatever anyone has said to inflame passion, let us forgive and forget. This bill is in the interest of the youth which we must empower because if we empower them we are empowering the future generation”
It would be recalled that days earlier, hundreds of youths had staged a peaceful rally at the main entrance of the National Assembly to drum support for the bill. The youths equally threatened sanction for any legislator that votes against the bill.
Analysts say other positives in the constitution review exercise are the financial autonomy for state legislatures and the independent candidacy. With independent candidacy, it was further argued, anyone seeking to contest for an elective office must not necessarily be a member of a political party. But how this will impact positively on the polity is yet to be seen.
Evaluating the entire exercise, spokesman of Afenifere , Yinka Odumakin said the constitution exercise failed to address the fundamental issues, adding the National Assembly focused only on the minors, adding that “the constitution review voted upon by the National Assembly is an exercise in futility as it fails to address the fundamentals. They have majored in minors while rejecting the critical issues of federalism or avoiding it totally. They have confirmed the fears that nationhood cannot be addressed through NASS.”