Constitution Amendment: December Deadline To Deliver Remains Sacrosanct, Says Deputy Speaker Kalu

.As Calls For Judicial, Police, Other Reforms Dominate Discourse

By Alkassim Bala Tsakuwa, Abuja

The Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives and Chairman, House Committee on Constitution Review, Hon. Benjamin Okezie Kalu has assured that the target to deliver an amended Constitution to Nigerians remains sacrosanct.

He gave the assurance while speaking to journalists on the side of the two-days retreat and stakeholders engagement held by the House Committee on Constitution Amendment in Enugu on Friday.

He said, “We promised Nigerians that by December, a document is going to emerge. And we are not below our targets. We are not behind our targets. We are marching. And I want to thank the members of the Parliament.

“The work the committee has been doing for a while now is the third retreat and within this period the secretariat has engaged with the senior secretariat and the deliberation of the parliament has been collected into a compendium public hearing has taken place and some of the issues mentioned during the public hearing.

“We didn’t leave it hanging in that room the views of those who came to contribute to the memoranda we have factored them into the compendium that we analyzed today and some of their views, not all have been incorporated and some have been merged for us to meet again in the next maybe two three weeks with the senate.

“This will be in lagos where the views of this parliament from the senate and that of the House of Representative will have a meeting like the meeting point. Some will be reduced some would be enhanced and after that we will now progress into looking forward to the voting that will take place in the parliament.

“So what we do today was fine-tuning like pruning the works that have been done so far, setting more target for ourselves based on the contributions of the public. You know we’ve done a lot of public engagement and from there we’ll progress to a point where some duplicities, duplications in the bill will be merged, like we noticed some today, and we are saying no, put them into one so that we don’t overburden the constitution. Certain things that are not supposed to be in the constitution, we remove them.

“Those ones could come through another parliamentary act, parliamentary enactment. There are other tools we can use to achieve what was intended to be achieved through the amendment of the constitution on those subject matters. So we have selected those ones, and we are planning to have a parliamentary outing on those ones that is outside the grand norm of the country. So that is what we achieved today.

While speaking on the quality of work being done by the Committee, Kalu stated that, their resolve to deliver on time did not push them to compromise in order to have the constitution amendment as soon as possible.

The Deputy Speaker added, “Definitely. You can’t compromised quality on the order of speed. Neither have we slowed down because we are not able to find quality. So quality is meeting speed. And the content we are delivering is within time.

“I want to thank my colleagues. They have been making a lot of sacrifices. During holidays, they were working. Once we started just on Tuesday, they were already retreating and deep diving. Research is going on. The consultants playing their role.

“The drafters correcting all the, you know, dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s. And all hands have been on deck to meet that target. And I’m assuring Nigerians that we are going to be on target. And I also want to thank the support of the executive.

Though the president has not interfered in any way, but he has encouraged us. He participated during the public hearing virtually, watching every activity. And he reported to us when we met him. He said he followed the public hearing all through. And that is a president that believes in democracy and a disciple of democracy.

“That support has emboldened us to keep doing what we are doing. And we are hoping that both the state-sponsored bills that they want to be incorporated in the constitution, by the time next week comes, we are going to be looking into that.

Attorney General and all the rest of them, we are going to be engaging to make sure that we have a document that is comprehensive, that is holistic, that has the impute of the public. So that when we claim in our preamble that we, the people of Nigeria, did this, it will indeed be the product coming from we, the people of Nigeria”.

In his address, the Deputy Governor of Enugu State, Ifeanyi Ossai who represented the state governor, emphasised on the need to have a diligent Judicial, police and other reforms that will attend to the needs of the Nigerian people.

According to him, the reforms intended in the proposed amendments and new bills in the ongoing exercise if implemented, will go along way in addressing the socio-political, security as well as economic challenges affecting the country.

According to him, whenever Nigerians discuss inclusive governance, even among parliamentarians, in media, politicians, those in the academies and almost all classes of Nigerians, they consistently describe Nigeria from the perspective of geopolitical sense.