National Assembly Doesn’t Have Power To Write New Constitution – Omo-Agege

Senator Ovie Omo-Agege, the Deputy President of the Senate, has said the National Assembly lacks the power to write a new constitution for Nigeria.

Omo-Agege, who is also the Chairman of the Senate ad-hoc Committee on Constitution Review, said this in an interview on Thursday while responding to a question on the demand of some Nigerians that a new constitution is written rather than amend the extant 1999 constitution.

According to him, the framers of the current constitution stipulated in Section 9 the modalities for any change, explaining that it is a stringent process that would require a majority of lawmakers to accede to.

He added that the drafting of a new constitution “Is not impossible but it is difficult”.

“Frankly, this very issue has become topical of late. For some of us, we can accept and tolerate that from people who don’t know. But it becomes a little bit perplexing and annoying, in fact, when you hear people who ought to know and indeed do know that we do not have the powers to write a new constitution (call for it). The only power we have is to alter the constitution and that is what the extant legal order provides for,” the Deputy Senate President said on Channels Television’s Politics Today.

“The framers of the constitution- and I was not one of them – in their wisdom decided that it would be best to have incremental alterations as opposed to a total overhaul; a total rewrite. And that is why they provided under Section 9 of the Constitution on how to go about this. What the law says is that we can alter any provision of the Constitution. It does not say we can alter all of the provisions of the constitution. And the provision sets out the methodology and the mode for doing just that.

“Don’t forget: those who asked us to do a rewrite, they forget that in Section 9, for you to do a rewrite of a new Constitution, you need to amend Section 9 of the (1999) Constitution. And for you to amend Section 9 of the Constitution, you require four-fifths – in the Senate, that is about 88 senators, of the 109; and 288 of the 360 members of the House of Reps – just for you to amend that Section 9 itself.”

Omo-Agege noted that despite the demands for a new constitution, the National Assembly joint committee on constitution amendment is yet to receive any memoranda asking for the amendment or repeal of Section 9, which, he said, would kick off the process of drafting new legislation.

He also stated that to amend Section 9, a bill had to be sponsored to seek the alteration.

“As I speak to you, we have received more than 350 memoranda on the amendment of the constitution and not one – not one – is requesting an amendment of the Section 9 of the Constitution. That is probably they know how difficult it is to muster 88 votes out of 109. To even muster two-thirds of the votes is almost impossible, not to talk about four-fifths of the Senate and the House of Representatives.

“But the bottom line is this: under the extant constitution, the only thing we are permitted to do is increment amendment or alteration, and this is not new.”

The Deputy Senate President said those who were agitating for a new constitution should meet with their lawmakers so that areas they did not like would be amended.