“So, if there are fundamental things that you need to be changed in the 1999 constitution, you can bring it forward, you can’t just sit in your room and be asking for a new constitution.”Also, when you look at the legal theory, there is what we call ‘grundnorm’, which is the basis of the legal order upon which every other legal order would stand. As of today, the 1999 constitution is the grundnorm.”
“Section 9 makes provision for the amendment of the constitution, with four-fifth of the National Assembly and two-thirds of the State Assembly. The implication of this is that such amendment would require consensus from almost the largest section of the Nigerian society rather than the wills of a particular individual because it will translate to 80 of 109 of the Senate and about 288 of 360 in the House of Representatives.”
The approach of the constitutional review committee of the National Assembly is: Throw open all issues including structure of governance.
Even if you are referring to 1963 constitution, what are the existing provision of our constitution that is not in line with 1963 constitution, then you name the sections we will delete or replace, if it’s about devolution of power, if it’s the exclusive list you want to take to residual or to concurrent, you can so do.
So, it’s just that some people have a fixated opinion that they just want to criticize without even engaging and interrogating the existing systems.
Now, talking about constitutional conferences, not only the 2014 conference, some people possibly have an atavistic connection with that because they participated in it.
On seccesion agitations, he said:
They also forgot that there was a 1994 constitutional conference by the Abacha administration that particularly in the South-West, our traditional rulers, opinion leaders came up with a document that they called the Yoruba Agenda which they submitted and there were far-reaching resolutions there.
What the constitutional review committee of the Senate did is to set up committees to review the 2014 Confab recommendations, El-Rufai’s report for the APC, and the 1994 National Conference report. We also reviewed all the previous efforts at making a constitution and what have been the gains and pitfalls.
Then, we reviewed all bills that have been presented by members of the National Assembly on constitutional amendment, and all these preceded going to the public hearing.
So, for people who have something to say about 2014, they are assuming without the requisite knowledge, without knowing that 2014 recommendations are part of what we are considering and it does them better gain to have participated by submitting memoranda rather than just sit down and say things.
But when you have people who just want to make criticism for want of criticism, they even go to the level of absurdity to make criticism; even the 1963 constitution was not done in Yoruba language or Hausa language.
The Osun Central Senator further added that Nigerians should expect the amended by the end of the year.
