Deputy Senate President, Senator Ike Ekweremadu has disclosed that the National Assembly is to now concentrate on the devolution powers from the central government to the federating states.

According to him, the committee on constitutional review had received several memos and presentations on this issue, adding that “our attention will be turned to the issue and others.

Delivering a lecture a lecture titled “Constitution and Electoral Review in Nigeria: The Journey So Far at the pre-convocation lecture of the 10th Convocation of the the Federal University of Technology, Minna yesterday, Ekweremadu disclosed that 16 items from the original 28 items in the 1959 Constitution concurrent list, were transferred to the exclusive list in 1999 Constitution, representing 57 per cent loss for the federating states.

The military leaders, he said, were to blame for the loss, saying “the central and command structure of successive military regimes did not help in the devolution of powers.

”We also have to bear in mind that our Constitutions since 1966 to date were always bequeathed by the military.We would appreciate why ours is a federalism with a knock-kneed devolution of powers; one in which unlike any other known stable federal state, the central government continues to suck up powers at the expense of the federating states.

``The challenge therefore, is to take a critical look at the exclusive, concurrent and residual list again and see how powers are best appropriated or develop for a better, more functional and lasting federation as in the cases of Canada, USA and India,” he said.


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