The Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rt. Hon. Benjamin Okezie Kalu, has garnered the support of Nigerian governors for the current review of the 1999 Constitution (as amended).
This came after a fruitful session with the Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF) in Abuja on Wednesday evening, during which Kalu, accompanied by the key officials of the House, shared that the governors are open to the suggested amendments.
The Deputy Speaker, who also leads the Constitution Review Committee of the House, underscored the crucial importance of governors in their capacity as leaders of sub-national governments.
He said: “The governors are major stakeholders and without the federating units, there is no Nigeria and if you ignore them, the wheel of progress towards realizing our objectives with regards to this constitutional review will be slowed down. And we considered it important to come and engage with them, to bring them up to speed, taking them through our work plan, what we have achieved so far and where we are headed. And we have had a robust discussion and I must say that the governors made beautiful contributions and they are in support of the constitution review.
“We also informed them that we are going to be visiting their states and the geopolitical zones to harvest the opinions of the members of the public in their various zones with regards to the thematic areas of the constitution review.
“We informed them that we have received about 161 areas to amend in the constitution and we are going to give them the breakdown of all of them in the coming engagement. This won’t be the first and last engagement. We are going to have a couple of engagements. This is how we want to do it, differently from how it has been done. So, from the beginning, we want them to have an input and we have requested for them to send us an anchor person, like a liaison, the person that will engage with the committee to bring their input closer, faster to the committee than it used to be and also to take our feedback to them. That way, it will make it easier that by the time this constitution review get to the States, it won’t be a difficult issue having the Houses of Assembly do what they are supposed to do with regards to he constitutional provisions and the role they need to play with the two-thirds voting for it.
“The governors spoke generally about the constitution. They were open minded towards all areas we are trying to look in the constitution. They were professional in the discussion. They listened and like nationalists, leaders of this nation, they are interested in what will make the nation move forward and were not fixated on any particular thematic area because we led before various thematic areas that we are considering at the moment.”