The National Assembly,
yesterday, said Nigeria would be restructured. Deputy Senate President, Ike
Ekweremadu, who briefed reporters at a
retreat in Lagos for the Senate and House of Representatives Committee on the
Review of the 1999 Constitution, said some of the contentious issues would be
reviewed to meet the yearnings of the people. Ekweremadu said the 1999
constitution needed reforms to enhance the development of the country, saying
railway would no longer be in the
exclusive list. He said:
“We have broken all the
issues into specific bills. Between
yesterday and today we have looked at
about 23 separate bills with separate issues. The idea is to ensure that by the
time we vote, each of them succeed or fail on its own when we conclude the work
and send it to the house to approve. “ We will collate and ensure that the
provisions of the constitution have been fulfilled regarding the alteration and
we will send it to the president for his assent. And the president will decide
which one to assent or not to assent.
“The implication,
therefore, is that if he assents to some, then those ones become altered parts
of the constitution. And the one he refuses to give assent, then we might
decide whether to override the veto. So, we want each of them to have a
separate life on its own. And this is based on our own experience in the last
exercise where everything was in one single bill and when the president withheld
his assent, all of them collapsed. Ike Ekweremadu “This is just an improvement
on what we did last time. It is something we innovated based on our experience
in the last exercise.
“Now, we have gone
through some specific issues like the time time frame within which a governor or
president will be able to assent to a bill. If you look at our constitution, I
think Section 58, if you pass a bill, you need to send it to the president for
his assent and he has to assent to
it within 30 days. “ Ekweremadu
explained that it was imperative for the Federal Government to shed some of its
powers. His words:
“We also tried to withdraw some powers from
the exclusive list to the concurrent list. You know we have been talking about
the restructuring of Nigeria, one of the components of restructuring is that
they are saying that there is too much power in the hands of the federal
government and we need to strip some of them from the federal government.
“What we have done is
to look at the nitty gritty issues where some of the items which they actually
needed will be removed from the exclusive list to the concurrent list where the
federal and the states can make laws regarding some of those items.
“And where there is conflict, the laws of the national
assembly will prevail. So, things like railways will have to be moved to the
concurrent list, the idea is that state can build railways within their states
and then a couple of states can even
decide to build railways across their states. The federal government can
also be building railways across the country and make policy around it.” He
noted that the country would continue to have minimum standards for wages in
both the public and private sectors.
“There should be
minimum wage for both the public sector and private sector, that is to say that
if it is N5000 don’t pay any person less than N5000 but it can be increased,
that is to say if Lagos has more money it can pay beyond the minimum wage. All
those who don’t have money cannot pay below the minimum wage no matter how poor
they are. So, in that way, we have a minimum standards for workers in Nigeria.
“We also looked at the
removal of the Joint local government account. The challenge there has been how
do you take care of the issues of teachers’ salaries because it is from that
joint local government state account that primary school teachers’ salaries are
paid. So, we wanted to be sure that if we remove the joint local government-
state account we will not jeopardise the payment of teacher salaries.
“So that is a very
contentious issue and we said we have to do further consultation with the
National Union of Teachers (NUT) and other stakeholders before we can take a
decision on that to be sure that we don’t create more problems when we are
trying to solve and existing problem.
“We believe we have done sufficient work. This
is an incremental approach that we have adopted in the amendment of the
constitution. So, what we are saying therefore is that after we have finished
with this, if we still have more time before election issues come up,
otherwise, maybe the next assembly will decide what to do”.
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