CONSTITUTION REVIEW: Those who equated devolution of power with restructuring scared away legislators- Saraki

The President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki, has disclosed that the reason for the failure of the devolution of power amendment at the recently concluded constitution review process at the national level was the equation of the concept with restructuring, a sensitive subject that scared away some legislators who represented interests that were against it.

Saraki said this even as he warned that any attempt to take same approach by advocates will likely make any such reform effort suffer similar fate.

The senate president disclosed this to newsmen during the 137th Inter-Parliamentary Union(IPU) Assembly in St. Petersburg, Russia on Tuesday.

Recall that the National Assembly had in the course of voting for amendment of the 1999 Constitution, on July 26, rejected devolution of power.

The rejection was the result of outcome of voting on the bill to alter the second schedule, Part I & II of the Constitution, to move certain items from the Exclusive to the Concurrent Legislative List to give more legislative powers to states.

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Following widespread public backlash however, legislators in both houses where it failed had promised to revisit the issue in a separate legislation as soon as possible.

Saraki called for dialogue, saying it was the best approach to getting Nigerians to see the benefits of devolution of power to all, rather than trying to compel reform of any part of the constitution.

He said, “Constitution amendment is such that we need the collaboration of everybody and it is always through dialogue not intimidation. We have to come to the table in a peaceful and friendly atmosphere.

“As I have said many times, if we had had this amendment about nine months ago, devolution of power would have passed.

“Unfortunately because of all the noise and people equating devolution of power to restructuring, those who were skeptical about restructuring unfortunately developed cold feet.

“I am hoping that things will calm down a bit and we will be able to have this discussion in an atmosphere that will allow people to know that there is nothing detrimental about devolution of power to any part of the country.

“We do not have to play politics with the issue. We must allow the National Assembly to do its job. Noise making is not the answer, there is a process to everything.

“We have sent what we have to the state houses of assembly to start working on and I am hoping that by the time we start engaging ourselves and getting everybody on board, we will be able to pass it”.

Saraki also revealed that the National Assembly planned to host a roundtable where experts would be invited to enlighten people on benefits of devolution of power and why it should be allowed to scale through.

 

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