By Mercy Aikoye
The Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives and Chairman, the Constitution Review Committee of the House, Hon Benjamin Kalu has disclosed that 40 bills seeking alterations of the 1999 Constitution (As Amended) were under various stages of consideration in the House.
Kalu stated this in Abuja on Wednesday while speaking at the pre-inaugural meeting of the Constitution Review Committee of the 10th House of Representatives.
He pointed out that the nature of the nation’s Constitution and the history around how it was made and handed over to a new civilian government in 1999, made it imperative for the parliament to continually revisit the several provisions of the Constitution and work towards accomplishing consensus on outstanding constitutional debates.
He added that the 10th House of Representatives would revisit some of the constitution amendment proposals which did not scale through during the previous assembly for one reason or the other.
According to him, ” Let me also remind the Committee that in the last Constitution Review efforts, there were some key Constitution amendment proposals that did not pass either because we did not fully understand their provisions or we did not have enough time to agree on them.
“An example was the proposal to create additional seats for women in Federal and State Legislative Houses. Let us use this opportunity to understand the proposal, hoping that those who are the promoters of this particular amendment will start their advocacy timely and be more thorough and comprehensive, reaching the stakeholders to control the mindsets of their representatives.
“I will like to urge the Committee to prepare to work very hard and timeously to deliver on citizens’ expectations of concrete amendments in the shortest possible time”, he said.
He said the composition of the Committee is representative of the constituent parts of the country and therefore, urged members to prepare to bring forth bills that represent the interests and concerns of their constituencies, as well as the national interest.
He assured that the committee would hold regular meetings with consultants and will work round the clock analysing the bills that are presented to provide additional resources and research information needed to enable them vote on the issues.
