The Senate yesterday said it will support the creation of additional states and local governments in the country on the grounds that the exercise conforms strictly with the rigorous requirements spelt out by section 81 of the 1999 Constitution.
"For us, we support creation of states, but you have to follow the procedure laid down by the constitution which most people are trying to avoid," Deputy Senate President and Chairman of the Senate Constitution Review Committee, Senator Ike Ekeremadu, said yesterday in a chat with correspondents.
Ekweremadu, who also confirmed that the report of his committee will be laid before the Senate this week, regretted that most of the requests his committee received for the creation of additional states and local governments, unfortunately did not follow constitutionally laid down procedures.
For instance, he said in almost all the cases, it was traditional rulers that signed such requests as opposed to the constitutional provision that only elected councillors and members of the state Houses of Assembly should endorse such requests. 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 has happened now is that our traditional rulers, out of the love for their people, quickly signed the requests for creation of states and submitted such in Abuja without looking at what the constitution says. "They are not the ones who should be signatories to such document, it has to be parliamentarians. "What happened was that you have to receive request pursuant to section 81 of the constitution."
Further explaining the process, the Deputy Senate President noted that, "When we receive requests, such requests must, as a matter of constitutional requirement, have the signature of the two-third of the Local Government councils of the affected areas requesting for such states.
"So, that includes the councillors and the chairmen of the council from the area requesting for the states. You must know that these must be elected councillors and chairmen because the constitution did not envisaged caretaker
committees. "If it is found that they are not elected chairmen, that means that they have not fulfilled that obligation. "Furthermore, there must be the signature of the two-third of the state assemblies from those respective areas requesting for a state.
"Then, there will be twothird signature of the National Assembly. Ekwereamdu, also said he had no intention to contest the 2015 governorship election in Enugu State.
On the issue of zoning, he said while he would be happy to see a candidate from Enugu North senatorial district emerge as the next governor of Enugu State, it would not be based on any previously agreed or written zoning formula since he was not aware of any such policy.
National Mirror