Despite repeated promises by the leadership of the 10^th National Assembly to pass series of bills on constitution amendments, findings by Sunday Sun have revealed that the process may hit a cul de sac if the festering division in the Senate is not urgently addressed.

Already, both the Senate and the House of Representatives have set up Standing Committees on the Review of the 1999 Constitution.

In the Senate, the Committee is headed by the Deputy President of the Senate, Jibrin Barau, while his counterpart in the lower legislative chamber, Benjamin Kalu, chairs it.

According to the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Kalu, the bills will be ready for presidential assets by August of 2024.

If the amendments must scale through, two-third of the senators or 73 out of the 109 members must vote to approve all the proposed bills.

In the House of Representatives, which is expected to approve the same amendments, it must have its own two-third or 240 out of the 360 members.

If the bill scales through, two-third of state Houses of Assembly, which is equivalent to 24 state Assemblies, must give concurrence before it could be signed into law by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

In the event that President Tinubu vetoes the bills within 90 days of transmission, both chambers can override his veto, through two-third (73 senators and 240 members of the House of Representatives).

The constitution amendment exercise had in 24 years altered at least 30 different provisions of the 1999 constitution with an expenditure of N24.850 billion.

The new constitution review exercise, Sunday Sun gathered, will address issues such as independent candidacy to contest for an elective office; creation of state police; federal structure and power devolution; fiscal federalism and revenue allocation; judicial and electoral reforms; immunity for presiding officers of the National and State Assemblies; full local government fiscal autonomy; state creation agitations; among others.

Members of the committees may also face the challenge of revisiting the age-long quests to separate the office of the Attorney-General of the Federation/state from the office of Minister/Commissioner for Justice; change in procedure for the enactment of an entirely new constitution, which includes a referendum; inclusion of basic education and primary healthcare in fundamental and justiciable human rights.

Other issues are inclusion of electoral offences as a ground to disqualify candidates from future elections; mandatory presentation of the yearly state of the nation address to a joint session of the National Assembly by the President; and removal of presidential assent to constitution amendment bills.

A senator from the North, told Sunday Sun that plans were underway to frustrate the exercise, especially by former governors who have been allegedly sidelined by the President of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio, and loyalists of Abdulaziz Yari, who are alleging that they got non-lucrative committees to head.

The senator said that since former governors who are now senators were ‘humiliated’ by Akpabio, by refusing to name any of them as a principal officer and chairman of an A-list committee, they’ve vowed to repay him by frustrating any plans to amend key components of the constitution.

He said that by the current design, the North or South cannot successfully amend the constitution without the total support of the other side.

He said though official and informal complaints have been tabled before Akpabio, he has refused to shift grounds.

For instance, he said Akpabio has made it a taboo for any lawmaker to condemn any action of President Tinubu, especially on the economy or insecurity.

The lawmaker said that Akpabio will either rule the senator out of order or simply “turn off the microphone.”

The Northern lawmaker said that out of the over 45 senators who voted for Yari during the inauguration of the 10^th Senate, over 40 of them were targeted by Akpabio and his clique and denied ‘juicy committee’.

He vowed that unless amends are made ahead of the crucial voting on the constitution amendments, the exercise may fail, especially issue around state police, Value Added Tax, and immunity for presiding officers of the National and State Houses of Assembly.

He said: “We’re aware that the National Assembly wants to embark on another constitution amendment exercise. Since the leadership of the Senate believes that we don’t matter, we’ll take our pound of flesh then. They believe that they’re in charge and that we can only complain. We will see.

“Can you believe that some senators don’t even have direct access to Akpabio? He sometimes behaves like the President of the country and makes himself inaccessible to many of us. You can confirm what I’m telling you from other senators.

“If you’ve also noticed a pattern, only selected people are named as key members and chairmen of ad hoc committees. Some of us have never been named members. We’ve even given up on that completely.

“Akpabio has made us idle and we can’t complain. We’d the chance to pick our own President of the Senate, but we allowed President Tinubu who we should supervise to do that for us. The leadership of the National Assembly takes instructions from the Villa.

“So, I wonder how they intend to amend the constitution when there’s an obvious division in the Senate? I don’t know about the House of Representatives, but I can tell you that the Senate is divided lawmakers know this as a fact.” (Sunday Sun)

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