Ekweremadu raises hope on restructuring

    Less than one week after the Senate rejected a bill geared at ceding more powers to states and other component units, Deputy President of the Senate, Ike Ekweremadu, has expressed fresh hopes that the rejected proposals could still be part of the Constitution when revisited.



   He said it was not the end of the road for the failed alteration bills since constitution amendment was a continuum, noting that further consultations as well as understanding of the issues were needed. The lawmaker who chairs the Senate Committee on the Review of the 1999 Constitution spoke during a consultative meeting on South East Infrastructural Development with a delegation of the Partnership to Engage, Reform, and Learn (PERL) and the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID) led by PERL’s team leader, Dr. Adiya Ode, in Abuja.

  He said: “We commend our colleagues for their understanding and ensuring that about 95 percent of the amendments we proposed to them scaled through. “We are also conscious of the fact that Nigerians are worried about some of the recommendations that did not pass. “Let me further appreciate and reassure Nigerians that we are sensitive to their feelings and that we are likely going to revisit some of the issues they are concerned about when we return from our vacation.

  “Some of the issues did not scale through because there is need for fuller understanding as well as more consultations and consensus building on them and their implications for our people.” Ekweremadu reiterated that devolution of more powers to the federating units would quicken infrastructural development in the country:

  “No doubt, your studies on South East were right because the region is indeed highly challenged, especially in the areas of transport infrastructure such as roads, railway, seaport. We are also challenged in the area of power. “That is why we in the Committee on Constitution Review believe we mean well when we talk about things like devolution of power.

  “Our view is that some of these things should be moved from the Exclusive List to the Concurrent List so that while the Federal Government is making efforts, the states too will be making efforts either individually or in clusters or partnership with one another. “That was why we took things like power to the Concurrent List so that states can generate power, transmit, and distribute power.
SUN