Confab delegates want religious matters expunged from constitution

AS debate on the President Goodluck Jonathan’s inaugural speech at the ongoing national conference entered its fourth day on Thursday, some of the delegates have asked the Federal Government to hands off religious matters and, as such, expunge its content from the Constitution.
It will be recalled that two representatives of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) at the confab had alleged that the current Constitution of Nigeria was skewed in favour of Islamic religion.
Bishop Joseph Bagobiri and Pastor Emmanuel Bosun had, on Tuesday plenary, faulted the nomenclature of the Nigerian Constitution.
According to Bosun: “In the 1999 Constitution, Shariah was mentioned 73 times, Grand Khadis 54 times, Islam 28 times, Muslims 10 times and there is no single mention of Christ, Christian, Christianity or church.”
Chief Olu Falae also said the National Assembly as currently constituted, was not competent to give Nigeria a new Constitution.
Speaking with journalists on the sidelines at the ongoing national conference, Falae, a delegate at the confab from South West, said this was because when the members were seeking election to the House of Representatives and Senate, they did not ask constituent powers to enable them make a constitution.
He said: “They were given legislative powers. They can amend constitution, make laws and pass the budget. They cannot smuggle constituent powers into their mandate after the election. So, they don’t have competent powers in the first place, that is number one. More importantly, I did an exercise sometimes ago and I discovered that less than 100 ethnic groups are represented both in House of Reps and Senate, out of about 400 ethnic groups.
“From that point of representativeness of the ethnic nationalities in Nigeria, the National Assembly is a minority institution unqualified to make a constitution for Nigeria,” he said.
He argued that the outcome of the confab is only needed to be subjected to referendum to have the force of law and does not require legislation in the National Assembly.
Falae said: “In any case the President did say that he was arranging for the outcome of this conference to be submitted to the people of Nigeria in a referendum. Now the people of Nigeria are the sovereign because they elected the members of the national assembly.