The process to further revise the 1999 Constitution by the Ninth National Assembly has hit the rocks, because the 25 State Houses of Assembly have not voted on the changes, more than six months after they were transmitted to them as constitutionally stipulated. The legislative leadership has now called on one of the governors to lobby his colleagues to pressure his state assembly to discharge its constitutional responsibilities on the issue in the interest of Nigeria. With almost five months left for the current legislative dispensation to end, completing this task appears to be a race against time.
A total of 44 Amendment Bills, according to the review of the Constitution, were forwarded to 36 state legislatures on May 29, 2022. However, only 11 states considered it. They are: Abia, Akwa Ibom, Anambra, Delta, Edo, Kaduna, Katsina, Kogi, Lagos, Ogun and Osun. Two-thirds, or 24 of the 36 states, must vote statutorily to approve the amendment before the legislative process can be completed in Abuja.
So manacled the process that the Speaker, House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, in the last public lecture in December last year, cried: “As it is now, it is doubtful that the effort to amend the current constitution will be completed before the expiration of the legislative term.” The President of the Senate, Ahmed Lawan, who attended the lecture of the National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies (NILDS), joined Gbajabiamila in a plea with Governor Nasir el-Rufai, who chaired the event, to persuade other governors to bring their influence. about the amendment of the state assembly. Interestingly, el-Rufai gave no assurance on this.
However, the state legislature, through a letter from the Conference of Speakers, demanded the National Assembly to include four new amendments in consideration, which they considered to be of interest to them and the state as well, for them to give their imprimaturs for the fifth time. constitutional amendment. The demands are: Establishment of State Police; Establishment of the State Judicial Council; Streamlining Procedures for Dismissing the Chairman of the State DPRD; and Institutionalization of Legislative Bureaucracy in the 1999 Constitution.
It is a quid pro quo setting that the upper legislative house has scoffed at; and holds the governor responsible for the intransigence of the legislature in the state. The Vice President of the Senate and co-Chairman of the Constitutional Review Committee, Ovie Omo-Agege, shortly after receiving the letter from the Conference of Speakers in May, dejectedly emphasized this point. He noted that, “No doubt, some state governors have worked hard to turn the Conference of Speakers and some state assemblies into political puppets, thus undermining and legitimizing the legislative institutions at the state level.” Therefore, he called on civil society organizations and relevant professional groups to intervene to resolve this seemingly insidious legislative issue.
With el-Rufai’s response to the disappointment of Lawan and Gbajabiamila, it is not difficult to see where the governors stand on the logjam. The governor noted the multi-layered police demand. He stressed, “I think it is now clear that the current police system is broken. It is not possible for Nigeria. Nigeria is the only federation in the world with a centralized police system,” among other demands he made. In fact, a decentralized policing system has been on the national agenda for decades. It was hotly debated at the 2014 National Political Conference, until a consensus was reached, which required a recommendation to be included in the envisioned new Constitution that never materialized.
Given Nigeria’s growing security concerns, with large areas controlled by non-state actors like Boko Haram, kidnappers and bandits, resulting in high levels of carnage and millions of internally displaced people, de-centralized policing has become imperative. It is difficult to understand why the federal legislature has not tweaked the existing security template for effective performance, despite four successful constitutional amendments. Resolving the impasse is not as herculean as it is made to appear. If the demands of the state assembly can be justified within the praxis of federalism and constitutional democracy, then the Ninth National Assembly led by Lawan should act quickly and reach a compromise deal with the state partners.
If the constitutional amendment ends in failure, as feared, the main officers of the National Assembly will be blamed; and not members of parliament in the states. It is naive of them to program critical legislative tasks such as constitutional review to a busy election year, or close to the sunset of the degree of the legislature, when the time for maneuvers in the event of divergence, such as this, is. limited or none at all.
44 changes to the constitution, with the possibility of the recording process still being born, contain provisions that address some of the country’s existential challenges. The financial autonomy of local governments, by eliminating the United States Regional Government Account is a form. Understandably, the lawmakers in the states, who have become the governor’s rubber stamps, may be made to see all the constitutional re-engineering before them as a poisonous chalice. The illegal manipulation of the account is the reason why the 774 local councils are only in nominal, because the monthly financial allocation from the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC), is stolen by most of the state governors.
Devolution of power, with a focus on energy or electricity, railways, airways; dungeon; independent candidacy in elections; the separation of the office of the Attorney General of the Federation from the Minister of Justice – also at the state level; the power of the National and State Legislature to summon the President and Governor, to answer security questions, or other matters, important details in the new amendment. This will reduce the Exclusive Legislative List by 68 items, which will hardly lead to effective governance at the centre. Either way, this critical task must be completed.
Seeking a new or people’s constitution, different from the one currently established by the military, always stops, because of suspicion and disagreement among the country’s ethno-regional elite. Federal lawmakers guarding their so-called sovereign powers jealously doesn’t help matters either. Consequently, additional and inevitable compromise constitutional adjustments have been embraced. The review has not been in-depth, as each legislative session is not as important as the foundation of governance in a federal democracy.
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