Senator Ovie Omo-Agege during a press briefing on Constitution amendment on Tuesday
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The Chairman of the Senate Adhoc Committee on Constitution Review, Ovie Omo-Agege, has disclosed that some State governors were bent on frustrating the amendment of Constitution because of the enshrinement of the local Government autonomy.
Omo-Agege stated this at a news briefing in Abuja on Tuesday, saying that 44 bills out 66 earlier recommended were transmitted to the 36 State Houses of Assembly, but only 11 responded and forwarded their resolutions.
He regretted after six months that the bills were transmitted to the Houses of Assembly, about 25 of them were yet to respond, a development he described as “hands of Esau, but the voice of Jacob.”
The States that responded according to the Deputy Senate President are,.Abia, Akwa-Ibom, Anambra, Delta, Edo, Kaduna, Katsina, Kogi, Lagos, Ogun and Osun, adding that they have performed their Constitutional responsibilities.
He added that the Speakers of 24 Houses of Assembly, through the Conference of Speakers of Houses of Assembly, have written a letter to the National Assembly Joint Committee on Constitution Review setting conditions upon which they would pass the bills, adding that governors are behind the action of the Speakers.
States that have vowed not to pass the Bills include Enugu, Imo, Kwara, Cross River, Rivers, Ondo, Kano, Jigawa, Bauchi, Gombe, Oyo, Taraba, Sokoto, Kebbi, Niger, Ebonyi, Zamfara, Plateau, Benue, Adamawa, Borno, Yobe, Ekiti and Bayelsa.
Present at the briefing were the Senate Leader Abdullahi Ibrahim Gobir, Senate Chief Whip, Orji Uzor Kalu, Deputy Chief Whip, Aliyu Abdullahi, Minority Whip Chukwuka Utazi, Adamu Aliero and Suleiman Abdu Kwari.
Omo-Agege said: “It is most disheartening to inform you that only 11 State Houses of Assembly have demonstrated their independence and loyalty to the constitution regarding the 44 bills. Twenty four State Houses of Assembly have yet to consider and vote on these bills.
”More worrisome is that while we are still expecting the receipt of the resolutions of the remaining Houses of Assembly, we received a letter from the Conference of Speakers of State Assemblies informing the National Assembly that the remaining states will not act on the 44 Bills, unless the National Assembly passes four new Bills they have proposed in the letter.
He said the National Assembly is not averse “to acting on any proposed Bill or memoranda appropriately tabled before it, at any time in its life.
“However, it is legally inappropriate for the Conference of Speakers to use the four Bills as a quid pro quo to act on the 44 Bills the National Assembly 44 Bills transmitted.”
“Although the Conference of Speakers did not allude to it in their letter, we are aware of the undue interference with legislative processes and the political capture of some State Houses of Assembly by some state governors….
“This interference has been ramped up, especially in opposition to the Bills granting financial and administrative autonomy to local governments.”
He appealed to stakeholders to prevail on the Conference of Speakers to withdraw their threat to truncate the constitution amendment process.
Responding to questions after his address, Omo-Agege insisted that the Constitution amendment process by the ninth National Assembly was not dead.
He added that of the 44 bills before the State Houses of Assembly, “the most fundamental to a lot of us is the local government autonomy, even if they shoot down every other Bill as not being important to them.”
The conference was organised by the National Assembly Joint Committee on Constitution Review.
However, neither the Chairman, House of Representatives Adhoc Committee on Constitution Review, Ahmed Wase, nor any member of the committee from the Green Chamber was present at the briefing.
Omo-Agege explained that he had Wase’s blessings to go ahead with the conference.
Meanwhile, the 9th National Assembly has seven months to the end of session and given the tedious legislative processes in the Constitutional amendment, it remains to be seen, if the amendment will succeed.
