From Thisday's Onwuka Nzeshi in Abuja, 06.24.2010
A fresh crisis is brewing between the Senate and House of Representatives over the amendment of the 1999 Constitution as the House yesterday accused the upper chamber of doctoring the harmonized version of the amendments.
The House specifically accused the Senate of substituting the harmonised version of the amendments with the Senate version during the transmission of the report to the 36 state Houses of Assembly.
But the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Information and Media, Senator Ayogu Eze, has denied the allegation that the constitutional alteration bill sent to the state Houses of Assembly is not the harmonised version passed by the two chambers of the National Assembly.
The Constitution (First Amendment) Bill 2010 was formally handed over to the state assemblies through the Chairman, Conference of Speakers of State Assemblies, Hon. Istifanus Gbana, last week Tuesday by Senate President David Mark.
Chairman, House Committee on Rules and Business, Hon. Ita Enang, who raised the alarm at yesterday’s plenary, disclosed that whereas the two chambers harmonised their positions on the alterations to the 1999 Constitution, it was the version passed separately by the Senate that was eventually transmitted rather than the harmonized report.
Enang who raised the issue as a matter of privilege said it was a violation of the process and urged the House to seek remedy immediately before it was too late.
In a bid to buttress his argument, Enang sited two publications namely The Punch issue of June 19, 2010 and The Nation of the same day where the Lagos State House of Assembly published the version of the amendments under their consideration, stressing that what was published was different from what was passed as harmonised version by the two chambers of the National Assembly.
He prayed the House Speaker, Hon. Dimeji Bankole, to direct the Clerk of the National Assembly to certify that what was transmitted to the 36 state Houses of Assembly was the harmonized version.
Chief Whip of the House, Hon. Emeka Ihedioha, however, argued that the best option was for the House to demand that the Clerk of the National Assembly withdraws the version already transmitted and thereafter transmit the authentic and harmonised version which has the final inputs of both the Senate and the House of Representatives.
The two chambers of the National Assembly have been at daggers drawn over the procedures to adopt in the amendment of the 1999 Constitution.
The crack in their relationship became manifest even at the preliminary stage of the process when the issue of who heads the National Assembly Joint Commi-ttee on Constitution Review came up at a retreat in Minna, Niger State.
This forced the 88 member Joint Committee on Constitution Review to split into two and each adopting separate strategies in the amendment of the Constitution. The House subsequently constituted the Special Ad hoc Commi-ttee on Constitution Review headed by the Deputy Speaker, Usman Nafada while the Senate had Hon. Ike Ekweremadu as the Chairman of its own separate Committee.
Each of the Committees passed separate versions of the alterations to the Constitution before they met at a conference where their separate positions were harmonised.
The National Assembly subsequently transmitted the harmonized version of the amendments to the constitution to the 36 state Houses of Assembly for ratification.
Senate Spokesman Eze said in a press statement last night that “this cannot be true (the House allegation). He stated that the three documents the secretariat was asked to transmit to the various houses are as: a copy of the harmonised version; a table showing the two versions passed by the Senate and House of Representatives respectively; and a copy of the report of the conference (harmonisation) committee of both chambers.
“We are therefore at a loss where the mix up, if any, would have arisen from", Eze said.
The passage of the amendments to the state assemblies marked a significant milestone in the process of reviewing the Constitution as the state legislators are critical partners in the exercise.
It is expected that the state Houses of Assembly will by simple resolution adopt the report and re-transmit same to the National Assembly for the final lap of the exercise. This phase of the exercise will be considered successful if at least two third of the 36 state assemblies endorsed the amendments.
The National Assembly said the ratification by the states may not pose a problem given the level of collaboration and cooperation already existing between it and the Conference of Speakers of state Houses of Assembly.
No comments:
Post a Comment