Committee can reverse Senate’s constitution amendment voting —Ekweremadu

Deputy Senate President, Senator Ike Ekweremadu

Deputy President of the Senate and Chairman of the Senate Committee on the Review of the Constitution, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, has explained that some of the clauses rejected by the Senate, but passed by the House of Representatives, can find their way back to the bill if the Conference Committee decides so.

While doing a post-mortem on the passage of the Constitution Amendment Bill by the Senate on Tuesday, Ekweremadu said the committee proposed a total of 31 clauses affecting 26 sections and Second Schedule of the 1999 Constitution.

He said, “While some clauses were passed in their entirety, some clauses were passed in part, while distinguished senators, in their wisdom, did notams some clauses.

“This is not an exception because each senator voted according to his/her conscience, and mandate of his or her constituents and the overall national interest.”

He noted that although the committee strongly recommended some amendments, the democratic values required that the votes were respected and the clauses could be revisited in the future if Nigerians felt strongly about them.

He said, “Once we set up the harmonisation committee to meet with the House, of course we have to have the mandate of the Senate on how we pursue it.

“If the House voted positively for it and we voted it out, we can concur with them and forms part of the harmonised version and then we bring it back to our people for voting; that is fair enough.

“I think the Senate will not stop us from adopting it if the House recommends it and  if we are convinced that it is the right thing to do.”

On Section 29, Ekweremadu said the Senate did not consider anything on marriage bill, saying that it had nothing to do with child marriage nor religion.

He said, “On the issue of Section 29, I want to appeal to Nigerians to please show understanding, to possibly read this section and understand that the issue has nothing to do with early marriage.  It has nothing to do with Islam. Essentially, it has to do with the renunciation of citizenship.

“So, you have to give it a proper perspective. I want to assure them that in the future, we are ready to revisit it if Nigerians feel strongly about it.

“We have no Bill to approve early marriage. We are not sponsoring any Bill against Islam. This particular provision has been in our Constitution since 1979.”