From Fred Itua, Abuja
The ongoing constitution amendment exercise, spearheaded by the Senate, may face a major setback, if plans by northern senators to halt the process, succeed.
Daily Sun gathered, yesterday, that northern senators, led by Danjuma Goje and Adamu Aliero, were championing the offensive against certain aspects of the amendment which they have perceived as inimical to interest of the region.
A pointer to what to expect during the consideration and passage of the amendments came up yesterday on the floor, when lawmakers considered the general principles of the alteration bills.
In their separate contributions, Goje and Aliero, vehemently opposed the planned deletion of the Land Use Act. They proposed that the status quo be maintained since the issue was controversial.
Ironically, Goje is a member of the constitution review committee and he signed the final document of the draft which was submitted to the Senate for consideration.
On the issue of abolition of joint account between local and state governments, Goje and Aliero said there was no need to tamper with the current structure.
Instead, they proposed that more time was needed by lawmakers to enable them interface with their constituents on what they called controversial issues before the amendments are passed.
Their suggestions were, however, rejected when the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, put the issue to a voice vote. Senators, predominantly from the south and some parts of Northern Central, voted ‘yes’.
Meanwhile, lawmakers are expected to consider and pass 27 amendments during the week.
The amendments are composition of members of the Council of State. This bill seeks to amend the Third Schedule to include former presidents of the Senate and Speakers of the House of Representatives in the composition of the Council of State.
Authorisation of Expenditure will also be considered. This bill seeks to alter sections 82 and 122 of the Constitution to reduce the period within which the President or Governor of a state may authorise the withdrawal of monies from the consolidated revenue fund in the absence of an appropriation act from six months to three months.
Devolution of powers will equally be debated. It seeks to alter the Second Schedule, Part I & II, to move certain items to the Concurrent Legislative List to give more legislative powers to States. It also delineates the extent to which the federal legislature and state assemblies can legislate on the items that have been moved to the Concurrent Legislative List.
Others bills are financial autonomy of State legislatures, distributable pool account, local government, state creation and boundary adjustment, the legislature and political parties and electoral matters.
The Senate will also consider presidential assent, timeframe for submitting the names ministerial or commissioners nominees, appointment of minister from the FCT, change of names of some local government councils, independent candidature, the police and restriction of tenure of the president and governor bills.
Separation of the offices of Accountant-General, Auditor-General and Attorney-General of the Federation and of the States from the office of the Minister or Commissioner for Justice, Judiciary, determination of pre-election matters and Civil Defence bills too are also expected to be debated and passed by the Red Chamber.
Similarly, citizenship and indigeneship, procedure for overriding presidential veto in constitutional alteration, removal of certain Acts from the Constitution, investments and securities tribunal, reduction of age qualification, authorisation of expenditure 1, deletion of the NYSC Decree from the Constitution, deletion of the Public Complaints Commission Act from the Constitution, deletion of the National Securities Act from the Constitution and deletion of the Land Use Act from the Constitution bills are also listed.
According to the Deputy President of the Senate, Ike Ekweremadu, this new approach was adopted to avoid the mistakes made by the 7th National Assembly Constitution Review Committee.
Ekweremadu said: “The committee consolidated and clustered amendment proposals into appropriate thematic and sectional heads. While some amendment proposals were incorporated into existing Senate Bills, others were grouped thematically. Additionally, some amendments that could not fit into any of the above classifications were produced as stand-alone bills.
“These clusters are given different short titles such as Fourth Alteration Bill No. 1,2,3, etc. The reason for this is to ensure that the rejection of section(s) dealing with an issue does not affect other sections dealing with different unconnected issues. This is to forestall the unfortunate experience of the 7th Assembly’s Constitution Alteration process, which after satisfying the provisions of section 9 of the Constitution was not assented to by the president.”