By Gbenga Abulude
The Deputy Senate President, Senator Ovie Omo-Agege, said on Thursday that the report of the Senate Committee on the Review of the 1999 Constitution will be ready in March 2021.
Omo-Agege, who is the Chairman of the Senate Panel on the Review of the 1999 Constitution, made this known at the first meeting of the Ad-hoc Committee after its inauguration on February 12, 2020.
He noted that the secretariat had been working and has identified many areas that needed review in the 1999 Constitution from their engagements in the past.
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These areas include, the need to address the federal structure of the country to be in tandem with our history and modern realities; revisiting the socio-economic and cultural rights as entrenched in Chapter 2 of the Constitution; fundamental principles of state policy; Electoral reforms to make our electoral system credible, free and fair; Fiscal federalism and revenue allocation; and comprehensive judicial reforms.
Other areas to be reviewed are the need to make the Constitution more gender friendly and affirm equal rights to women and girls; need to strengthen the Independent National Electoral Commission, Federal Character Commission and other oversight agencies; and need to address the challenges of residency and indigeneship.
Speaking to Ad-hoc committee, Senator Omo-Agege said, “We have designed several outreach programmes, including the utilisation of social media to receive and collate the views and opinions of Nigerians.
“At the end, our technical team will analyse the contributions and turn them into operations for the relevant sections of the Constitution.
“In addition, Distinguished Senators and members of the House of Representatives have initiated Constitution alteration Bills.
“All of them will be subjected to the relevant legislative process.
“It is in line with this that the Committee is working on virtual conferencing to facilitate its work in view of the COVID-19 pandemic so as to ensure that our meetings within and outside the National Assembly premises are not unduly interrupted and frustrated from holding.
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“Presented before you is a work plan that has been proposed for your input.
“It is more of a road map of the Committee, with the aim of presenting our report to the Senate plenary at the end of the first quarter of 2021.”
