Nigeria At 53: A Scrutiny of National Assembly’s Constitutional Review

When the present National Assembly led by the Senate President, David Mark resolved to embark on a fresh review of the 1999 constitution drafted by Military government, many Nigerian elites and indeed the average Nigerian greeted it with much expectation as well as reservation considering the manner with which the purported third term bid of former President Olusegun Matthew Obasanjo aborted an earlier attempt.

The feeling of most Nigerians is that this fresh attempt under a new executive led by President Goodluck  Ebele Jonathan will not go the way of the previous attempts, particularly against the backdrop with which both Houses of the National Assembly sought the general views of Nigerians through memoranda and public hearing.

The enthusiasm was so much that Nigerians did not bother about the colossal amount expended on all Senatorial and National Constituencies to organize public hearings and print materials where the thoughts of individuals, groups, institutions, ethnic nationalities and other stakeholders were made known.

Though the process of the constitutional amendment by the National Assembly is still on- going several months after the views of Nigerians were extracted via public hearing and memoranda, indications are that the exercise is another waste of public fund and a process already designed to fail from the beginning.

This is more- so when one considers the fact that a nexus of opinions across the country suggests a yearning for financial autonomy for the 774 local governments in the country, scrapping of state independent electoral commissions and running of a true federal state as well as independence of the judiciary among other pressing National issues.

But suffice to say that despite this general consensus of opinions by different stakeholders in the country on these issues which are germane to our genuine national development, the National Assembly, particularly the Senate appears bent on imposing its preconceived decisions on the sensibilities of Nigerians.

The National Assembly, particularly the Senate has shockingly brushed aside the clarion call for local government autonomy, kept silence on the scrapping of state independent electoral commissions and has gone ahead to tackle the decentralization of labour and other less vital issues in its constitutional amendment process, leaving core National issues that when addressed will douse tension and give every geopolitical zones in the country a great sense of belonging.

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