'Constitution review report ready this week'
DEPUTY President of the Senate and Chairman of the Committee on Review of the Constitution, Ike Ekweremadu, Monday said none of the applications for creation of states has complied with the due processes stipulated in the constitution.
Briefing journalists in Abuja, Ekweremadu also declared that work on the constitution review has reached an advanced stage, adding that his committee would submit its report on the exercise before the end of this week.
"I believe that God willing, by this week, we should be laying on the table the report of the Senate Committee on Constitution Review. Our objective is to ensure that by this time, we should be able to submit the report, probably discuss it and pass it at the Senate, and then we should be able to push it to the House of Representatives and the states assemblies respectively.
"We are hoping that they will be able to move as fast as we are doing so that hopefully, we will be able to achieve our July deadline."
On state creation, he said what have been done so far by many state creation applicants breach the procedures dictated by the constitution.
Ekweremadu said: "People think they will come to Abuja and submit memoranda and the National Assembly will deliberate on it and then subsequently announce that so and so states have been created. Unfortunately that is not the case.
"What happens is that you have to receive request pursuant to Section 8 of the constitution. When we receive request, that request must, as a matter of constitutional requirement, have the signature of two-third of the local government of the affected area requesting for the state. That includes the councillors and the chairmen of the council from the area requesting the state. And these must be elected councillors and chairmen because the constitution did not envisage caretaker. If it is found out that they are not elected chairmen, that mean that they have not fulfilled that obligation." According to Ekweremadu, there must be signature of the two-third of the state assembly members from those respective areas requesting for a state. Then, there will be two-third signature of the National Assembly.
"But what has happened now is that our traditional rulers, out of the love for their people, quickly signed the request for creation of state and come and submit in Abuja without looking at what the constitution says. They are not the ones who should be signatories, it has to be parliamentarians. My own understanding of the constitution is that it is not just going to be parliamentarians but serving parliamentarian."
The Guardian