Why Senate Has Not Constituted Constitutional Review Committee – Lawan

Chairman, Senate Committee on Navy, Senator George Thompson Sekibo; Deputy Senate President, Ovie Omo-Agege; President of the Senate, Ahmad Ibrahim Lawan; European Union Ambassador to Nigeria and ECOWAS, Ketil Karlsen; Senate Leader, Senator Yahaya Abdullahi, and Deputy Minority Leader, Senator Emmanuel Bwacha, during a courtesy visit by the ambassador to the Senate President at the National Assembly, Abuja, on Wednesday, December 4, 2019.

President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan on Wednesday explained why the upper legislative chamber has yet to set up a committee on the review of the Nigerian Constitution.

Lawan said the Constitutional Review Committee has not been set up because the Senate has been pre-occupied with other issues like the 2020 budget.

The Senate President spoke while receiving in audience the European Union Ambassador to Nigeria and ECOWAS, Ketil Karlsen who paid him a courtesy visit.

He, however, assured the nation that the committee will soon be put in place.

“Very soon, we will constitute our Committee on Constitutional Review. We haven’t done so yet because we have been engaged so much more with other issues.

“We believe that by the time we passed the budget, then our committee on Constitutional Review will be put in place.

“By next year January, the committee will start some work because we already have some references that require some kind of constitutional review,” Lawan said.

The Senate President told his guest that the will and determination to carry out reforms is there.

Lawan expressed appreciation to the support the EU has been extending to Nigeria particularly in the areas of the electoral process and political development and cooperation.

“Our democracy since 1999 has received a lot of support from the EU and this is making a very positive impact.

“The relationship between the EU and the Nigerian government is not like it is with other organizations.

“We also have a relationship at the level of the legislature. We have the EU-ACPU joint parliamentary Assembly. We believe this is one area thru which we can continue to discuss issues that affect us in relation to the EU or what we think we can be doing together,” Lawan said.

Lawan asked of EU for more support in the area of capacity building particularly for the Senate Committees on INEC, National Planning, and Finance.

Earlier, Ambassador Karlsen said EU is for many years a very significant partner of Nigeria and expressed the hope that the current EU leadership will “be able to establish even deeper relationship with Nigeria.”