[size=14pt]CONSTITUTION AMENDMENT: Fake copies supplied to state Houses of Assembly -Reps[/size]
Written by Idowu Samuel, Abuja
Thursday, June 24, 2010

THE possibility of holding the 2011 general election as scheduled looked dim on Wednesday, as the House of Representatives called for the withdrawal of copies of the proposed new constitution





http://odili.net/news/source/2010/jun/24/612.html



from the 36 states of the federation.

The Reps took the decision on discovering that the copies of the amended constitution earlier forwarded to all the state Houses of Assembly were fake, because they were not the harmonised copies signed by both the Senate and the House.

Against this background, the House has called on the clerk of the National Assembly to replace the withdrawn copies with the harmonised version, thus indicating that the state houses of assembly in Nigeria will now begin to make their inputs into the harmonised version afresh.

Indications to this effect emerged during Wednesday's sitting of the House when the Chairman of the Committee on Rules and Business, Honourable Ita Enang, drew the attention of his colleagues to the copies of the amended constitution in circulation, noting that it was only the Senate version that was submitted to the states.

Enang said it was wrong for the state houses of assembly to work on the Senate copies of the amended constitution whereas what should have been presented to them was the harmonised copies duly signed by both federal legislative Houses.

According to Enang, the anomaly in the process of the constitution amendment became noticeable through an advertorial on constitutional Amendment sponsored by Lagos State, published in two national dailies and which he said indicated that states of the federation had been working on only the Senate copy made available to them rather than the harmonised copies.

Enang, however, failed to explain the origin of the omission and why the two houses failed to jointly certify that the authentic copies had been sent to the state houses of assembly.

It was against this background that the Speaker, Mr Dimeji Bankole, instructed the clerk of the House to liaise with the Clerk of the National Assembly to withdraw the copies already in the custody of the state houses of assembly, and substitute them with the harmonised version.

In essence, the state houses of assembly are now to await the harmonised National Assembly Bill for An Act to Alter the provisions of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 for them to make necessary input after which the constitution could be passed into law with two-thirds support of the statehouses of assembly.

The implication now is that all efforts made by each state legislature on the copies in their possession had amounted to nullity since they are to start work on the harmonised version afresh.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had predicated the start of the 2011 general election on the outcome of the ongoing efforts by the National Assembly to amend the 1999 Constitution, anchoring the reason for that on the necessity to factor the changes in the constitution into its electoral programmes.

INEC had given two tentative dates, January and April, for the commencement of the elections during the leadership of the former national chairman, Professor Maurice Iwu.

Both the Senate and the House of Representatives had held a joint sitting of their respective committees on constitutional amendment to harmonise areas of differences in the constitution each of them had amended with a view to presenting the harmonised copy to the states.