The Senate on Tuesday, October 21, 2014 approved radical changes to some fundamental provisions of the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria, which were presented to it by the conference committee, composed of members of both chambers of the National Assembly. The Senate, while harmonizing its amendments with those earlier passed by the House of Representatives, approved 23 new amendments to the extant constitution but retained the immunity clause for the president, vice president, governors, and their deputies.
Although the Senate had promised to adopt the report of the Justice Kutigi National Conference which ended in August, the red chamber made a volte face by rejecting the removal of immunity clause. It amended section 4 to expand public officers covered by the immunity clause to include legislators in respect of oral or written statements in the course of their legislative duties. The amendment also empowers the National Assembly and the state houses of assembly to prescribe civil or criminal sanctions for failure or neglect to obey summons issued to anyone by the legislature.
The senators also amended Section 7 to allow for local government autonomy. It approved independent candidacy for future elections, by amending sections 65 and 106 of the 1999 Constitution. Section 9 was amended to remove the need for presidential assent to amend constitutions that emerge after alteration process. The lawmakers also amended Section 67 to make it mandatory for the president to deliver a “state of the nation address” to a joint session of the National Assembly once a year, while also empowering the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to deregister political parties for breach of registration requirements and failure to win any of the presidential, governorship, local government chairmanship elections or seats in either the state or National Assembly.
Section 124 was amended to empower local government administration by scrapping the State Independent Electoral Commissions (SIECs), while Section 81 was amended to ensure accountability and efficient service delivery. The section provides for the funding of the Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation, Office of the Attorney-General of the Federation, National Security Agencies, the Nigeria Police and the Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal Commission directly from the Consolidated Revenue Fund. This puts the security agencies and the police on first line charge.
The amendment also confers exclusive jurisdiction on the Federal High Court for trial of election offences. It ratified that a court or tribunal shall not stay any proceedings on account of any interlocutory appeal; and that where a “force majeure” occurs, the period shall not be counted in the computation of the 180 days for the purpose of determining election petitions.
But most critical and probably controversial of the new amendment to the nation’s constitution, which is the grundnorm, is the abolition of a unified minimum wage structure across the country. The removal of national minimum wage from the exclusive legislative list and placing it on the concurrent list implies that the three tiers of government, namely, federal, state, and local governments are now to determine the remuneration of their employees. Whereas this policy is in conformity with the principle of federalism, it exposes workers of states with low allocation from the federation account and poor internally generated revenue to manipulation and starvation wages. This anomaly could create despondency among the citizenry who buy from the same the market but whose misfortune is that they work for a poor state. The policy would also create inequity and further erode the virtue of patriotism among its casualties.
As the new constitution amendments await the concurrence of two thirds of the 36 state houses of assembly to become effective, we call for greater scrutiny of each item in the overriding interest of the nation and her citizens.