The Deputy President of the Senate, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, recently, spoke to faculty and staff of the John Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, SAIS, Washington DC on the efforts to reform Nigeria’s constitution. The meetings uncovered the underlying frames and fractures in law making in Nigeria
The Director of African Studies Programme, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Washington DC, Prof. Peter Lewis, presenting a gift to the Deputy President of the Senate, Ike Ekweremadu, at the end of a lecture delivered by the Senator at the school recently
The two-time Deputy President of the Senate was concurrently Chairman of the Senate Committee on Constitution Review, SCCR, and was the first among the three persons to have held the office in the fourth republic to successfully lead the National Assembly to alter the 1999 Constitution.
With headquarters in Washington D.C, the SAIS, established in 1943, offers international perspective to some of the world’s most significant developments.
The school became an affiliate of the prestigious John Hopkins University in 1950.
It has, however, progressed to establish campuses in two in Europe and Asia.
The spotlight on Nigeria’s constitution reforms was the focus of the school at the lecture entitled, “Constitution review in an emerging democracy”, delivered by Ekweremadu to faculty and students of the school in Washington.
Other dignitaries present include some members of the Nigerian community in the United States (US) led by Ambassador Ade Adefuye. There was also representation from the US State Department.
Before the lecture, Ekweremadu paid a courtesy call on the dean of the school.
A pall of gloom had preceded the event following reports from Nigeria earlier that day of the bus park bombing in Nyanya, Abuja which killed scores. Before he commenced the lecture, the Deputy President of the Senate called for a time of silence in memory of the victims.
Before Ekweremadu, the Senate effort in Constitution review had been led, first by Senator Haruna Abubakar, now late, and Senator Ibrahim Mantu. The latter effort by Mantu was overshadowed by the third term controversy which culminated in the abandonment of all the amendments.
It was not until 2010 that the first set of alterations to the 1999 Constitution were made under the Ekweremadu leadership of the Senate Committee.
The Deputy President of the Senate, who gave a rundown of his experience in leading the process that led to the first 2010 amendments after the botched attempts in 2003 and 2006, however, lamented challenges that continued to militate against the fine-tuning of the Constitution. He cited among others, inexperience, ethnic bias and lack of political will by many stakeholders.
He particularly lamented the failure of the state Houses of Assembly to adopt the proposal for their financial autonomy supposedly out of fear of their governors.
Ekweremadu who recently called for the adoption of single term limit as a solution to the crisis of succession in executive offices, again raised the issue, saying the country should adopt what he advocated for such offices for a transition period of 30 years during which the country’s democratic culture would have mature.
He also suggested modification of Nigeria’s system of government to make ministers give regular account of their stewardship to parliament in a system that would make erring ministers vacate office should they lose the confidence of the legislature.
Noting the relative success of the 2011 election which he attributed to the amendments made to the Electoral Act in 2010, he said the National Assembly was now set to push ahead with further amendments that would fine-tune the electoral process.
Prominent among the proposed amendments is a clause which the Deputy Senate President said would ensure that all election disputes arising from the polls in 2015 are settled before the winners take office.
Ekweremadu also spoke on the relationship between local and state governments as he called for local governments to be fully integrated under the control and structure of the states.
”My view is that we can adopt the Canadian model and leave local governments as state affairs. The states should determine the number of local governments they want and how to fund such local governments. The sheer size and population of India necessitated the Indian model where local governments constitute a third tier of government”, he stated.
The Deputy President of the Senate called for the decentralisation of policing, saying Nigeria is the only country he knows operating a federal structure with a central police system.
The decentralisation of policing, according to him, would significantly help the campaign against crime including the insurgency mounted by the Islamist Boko Haram group.
”It must be said, however, that prevalent global trend in crime-fighting and the realities of security challenges in the country make the decentralisation of policing inevitable. Decentralised policing gives the police the advantage of knowing the environment in which they operate geographically, culturally, socially, politically and even economically”, he stressed.
”More so, the concern that decentralised policing might lead to abuse by state governments appears quite untenable in our situation. This is so because even with the total control over the police residing with the federal government, it is still being variously abused at all levels. The decentralised police will be effectively monitored by an independent Police Service Commission to ensure that abuses are reduced to the barest minimum.”
In advocating for a single term limit, he said:”Among other advertised benefits, single-term would avoid the distractions, manipulations and divisiveness of re-election campaigns, while facilitating a more rapid circulation or rotation of power among the various Nigerian groups. But critics contend that such a change in term limit could remove electoral incentives for good governance, while further entrenching corrupt ethnocentric politics.”
Ekweremadu took questions from the audience. One of the faculty members raised issues with Nigeria’s stern law against homosexual practice.
Responding, the Deputy Senate President said that every society has its culture and core beliefs and that, while Nigeria respected the values of Americans, the international community to respect the core values held by Nigerians.
After the lecture, Ekweremadu had an interactive session with members of the Nigerian community in the US during which time he addressed many concerns raised by the community.
He also spoke to journalists on the US visit. His words:
“The major thing I came here to do was to present a paper at John Hopkins University. Outside that, I had meetings with some interest groups. I met with the National Security Adviser in President Bill Clinton’s administration, Mr. Sandy Barger, and we spoke about security issues in West Africa and how they could be of assistance to us using their experience, and he was very, very forth coming.
He spoke about the issue of border control and how that has been a panacea of sorts in the Middle-East and we are going to take it up from there as I intend telling our National Security Adviser of our discussion so that the two of them can take it up from there.
”I also spoke with officials of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies and they wanted an assurance that there would be free and fair elections and I made it clear to them that we have been in the process of electoral reform since 2010.
The group had earlier met with Dr. Doyin Okupe and Alhaji Lai Mohammed and my meeting with them was more like a follow-up. I assured them that we are working with Prof. Atthairu Jega, the Chairman of the Independent and National Electoral Commission, to ensure that the elections in 2015 will be very transparent.
”They wanted to find out what would happen in the North-east. I told them that we are very optimistic that matters would have been settled before then and that Nigeria is considering a lot of options in dealing with Boko Haram including a joint effort on the level of the Chad River Basin Commission which would mean Nigeria, Chad, Niger being involved in finding a solution to this problem because that had been the major problem in Nigeria’s engagement with Boko Haram.
So, because of the sub-regional implications, it became necessary for Nigeria to involve other countries within the sahel region to ensure that we have a concerted effort in dealing with this matter. I am aware that in Chad they are selling AK 47 rifles on the streets; so if they are not involved, we will be wasting our time because the supply of arms will go on unhindered.
”And I made it clear to them that we are open to dialogue on ideas on how to deal with insurgency; we want our friends to be part of any effort to resolve the issue.”
No comments:
Post a Comment