The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, has expressed serious doubts over the possibility of the National Assembly to complete the ongoing constitution amendments before the expiration of the ninth Assembly.

Gbajabiamila stated this in Abuja Monday while presenting the Distinguished Parliamentarians Lecture 2022 organised by the National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies (NILDS).

His paper was titled ‘Delivering on our contract with Nigeria: Implementing the Legislative Agenda of the 9th house of Representatives – Progress, Challenges and Way Forward.’

He noted with regret the fact that many state assemblies had yet to legislate on the 44 bills aimed at amending the critical aspects of the nation’s constitution, sent to them by the National Assembly since March this year.

The leadership of the ninth Assembly, at the beginning of the current legislative session in 2019, earmarked a whopping N1 billion for its ad hoc committee in the two chambers to carry a comprehensive review of some controversial aspects of the 1999 Constitution.

The process requires the endorsement of not less than two-thirds of the 36 state Houses of Assembly for any of the bills to sail through but far less than half of the 36 states were believed to have have so far transmitted their responses back to the National Assembly.

However, Gbajabiamila, while presenting his lecture, lamented that state Houses of Assembly were frustrating the efforts of the federal lawmakers to pass the amendments to the constitution before the ninth Assembly wounds up in the second week in June next year.

The speaker said: “That process now seems to have stalled in the state Assemblies. As it is today, it is doubtful that the current constitutional amendment effort will conclude before the expiration of this legislative term.

“Despite broad national agreement on the need for reform, the potential for achievement can rise or fall based on differences in expectations of the context, pace and direction of the specific proposals.

“The success or failure of every significant governance initiative depends on the extent to which the objective is a shared priority of the different arms of government and, in some cases, of the state governments.

“Several of the commitments in the Legislative Agenda require amendments to the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to achieve them.

“If you took a poll in this room now about the importance and need for substantive reforms to our nation’s constitution, I am sure the poll would return an overwhelming majority in favour.

“The National Assembly has passed a raft of amendments to the constitution and advanced them to the states as required,” he said.

Meanwhile, the President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, on Monday urged the Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, to prevail on his colleagues to encourage their respective state Houses of Assembly to transmit back to the National Assembly their responses on the bills sent to them on the constitution amendment.

The Senate President also stated this while declaring open the Distinguished Parliamentarians Lecture 2022.

Lawan said: “We will task you to lobby for us. We have sent (to the states) the outcome of our constitution review and we are yet to receive all from the states.

“So we should be able to wind up this process by getting responses from the state Houses of Assembly. Even if it is one month left, we have the capacity of working together to ensure that we pass some of the legislations that are required in a very expeditious manner.

“Lobby your governor colleagues because I can see that you do that very well,” he urged.

The Kaduna State Governor, El-Rufai, who was the chairman of the occasion, urged the National Assembly to work on pieces of legislation that would lead to the creation of state police among others.

He also advocated legislative screening for federal and state judges.

El-Rufai said: “It is supposed to take excesses of the executive, as well as the judiciary. That is why it is the legislature only that can remove the chief justice or the chief judge of state, indeed, and other federal deputies, even on the appointment of ordinary judges has to be confirmed by the legislature.

“This is something that I recommend actually that we introduce as a constitutional amendment so that all senior judges, judges of Superior Court of record should be subject to confirmation by the state House of Assembly with a National Assembly as the case may be,” he added.

The governor said he would not retire to the Senate after his tenure unlike his colleagues.

“I know that many of my governors retire to the Senate, but, I can assure you that I will never retire to the legislature.

“So I really, really have great respect for those that are in the legislature and manage to make it function.

“Being here is also an opportunity to learn and remedy my personal defects because the legislature is one branch of the government that I know like I can never function in,” he said.

On the issue of state police, El-Rufai said: “First, I think we are all clear now that the current policing system is broken and doesn’t work for Nigeria.

“Nigeria is the only federation in the world with one centralised police system. I think this National Assembly has the capacity to enact the state and community policing system that prevents the abuses of the past and takes into account the challenges of the present.” (THISDAY)

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