The House of Representatives on Wednesday passed 85 new clauses to the 1999 Constitution (as amended), among which was the rejection of immunity for the President and state governors facing criminal charges.
By the new provision on immunity, the
President, Vice-President, governors and their deputies will vacate
office, if convicted of any criminal offence.
A total of 339 out of the 360 members of the House voted on Wednesday to pass the clauses.
Voting and collation of results ended at about 10.43pm.
On immunity, 306 members voted to remove it, 17 opposed it, while 14 abstained.
The House retained four years as the tenure of office of elected officials.
Similarly, 293 lawmakers voted to endorse autonomy for local governments, as against 39 who opposed it. Seven others abstained.
This development meant that the House
took a different position on the issue, compared to the Senate, which
rejected autonomy for the councils.
Lawmakers also scrapped State
Independent Electoral Commissions and transferred the responsibility of
conducting council polls to the Independent National Electoral
Commission.
Independent candidacy was also endorsed
by the House, meaning that in future, persons who do not belong to any
political party, can stand for elections as individuals.
A total of 313 lawmakers endorsed the provision, while eight opposed it. Twelve others abstained.
Like the Senate, the House retained the
controversial proposal on life pension for the President,
Vice-President, Senate President, Speaker of the House of
Representatives and Deputy Speaker.
A total of 284 lawmakers endorsed the provision, with only 18 opposing it. Thirty-six others abstained.
Other highlights included the transfer
of health, housing, electricity and railways from the Exclusive
Legislative List to the Concurrent List.
This implies that states can now make laws on these issues.
However, the issue of minimum wage and labour matters were retained in the Exclusive List.
The House adopted all the
recommendations of its report on the Peoples’ Public Sessions it
conducted across the Federation on November 10, 2012.
The sessions were conducted by its Ad-Hoc Committee on Constitution Review headed by the Deputy Speaker, Mr. Emeka Ihedioha.
Lawmakers had to resort to voting manually on Wednesday as attempts to use electronic voting system failed.
The much-hyped intervention by NigComsat to rescue the situation failed to work after more than three hours of trying.
The House had co-opted NigComsat on
Monday to assist, by installing an improvised electronic voting system
with the aid of ipads.
The improvised system was to serve as temporary replacement for the faulty voting system in the House.
The Director-General of NigComsat, Mr.
Ahmed Rufai, who supervised the installation of the temporary system on
Tuesday, had assured lawmakers that it would work perfectly for the
purpose of voting.
However, as members got set to vote on Wednesday, the system failed to work.
Members waited for over three hours as Rufai and his technicians battled to fix the problem to no avail.
Rufai claimed to have tested the system
earlier in the morning and ascertained that it worked, but it suddenly
failed to transmit signals as voting was about to start around 11am.
In the face of the development, the Speaker, Mr. Aminu Tambuwal, opted for manual voting.
The manual voting was a tedious process,
involving voting by 339 sitted lawmakers, collation of results and
analysing the results to meet the constitutional requirement of
two-thirds majority (240) to pass any proposal.
Each member voted using a document containing the 87 changes (clauses) proposed for inclusion in the constitution.
Two of the clauses were later dropped, leaving 85 as passed.
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Impressive.
ReplyDeleteKudos Reps.
I will say a big kudos to our amiable and indefatigable members of the House of Representatives of Nigeria. They have individually and collectively exhibited true statesmanship and patriotism to the Federal Republic of Nigeria by always deciding on critical state issues in the best interest of the electorates for whom they swore to represent. A case at hand was their voting pattern on the constitutional amendment just concluded in the House despite all odds of technical hitches here and there. They took the pains to vote manually and ensured that the process was peaceful. I think the Nigeria Senate need to wake up to its mandate and responsibility by emulating the House of Reps. Obviously, the House of Reps has outshined the Senate in so many issues of National Interest despite a few corrupt tendencies that were observed in the conduct of the affairs of some of its committees. The Senate really needs to wake up. It is sad to note that most of the so-called distinguished senators who are richer, more experienced, older are more corrupt and insincere in deciding on national issues. They are just egocentric and self-centred in all their actions and utterances. May God help Nigeria and bless the House of Reps and their leadership. Amen.
ReplyDeleteWhy not 6 yrs single term to reduce in fighting and corruption in the country. You people goofed there!
ReplyDelete