Northern delegates on Wenesday took
their anger against the ‘draft constitution’ by the National
Conference farther by writing a protest letter to the Chairman of the
conference, Justice Idris Kutigi.
In the letter dated Wednesday, they
asked Kutigi to withdraw the document from circulation because its
content should not be debated .
The letter reads in part, “We call upon
the leadership of the conference to discountenance and withdraw the
‘draft Constitution’ and the accompanying bills which have been
circulated.
“We urge the conference leadership to
table the draft conference report which contains only the resolutions
openly and officially sanctioned and adopted by delegates for validation
and adoption as provided for under the National Conference Procedure
Rules, 2014 and as envisaged in the Work Plan adopted.
“For the avoidance of doubt, we shall
not be a party to the adoption of the report or any part thereof by
voice vote. We urge the leadership of the conference to be strictly
guided by the Conference Procedure Rules, 2014.”
They said they were shocked when the
Secretary of the Conference, Dr. Valerie Azinge, distributed some
documents, including one entitled, “Report of the National Conference,
2014 draft constitution” which they said was also accompanied by draft
bills to promulgate into law the “constitution of the Federal Republic
of Nigeria, 2014.”
The Northern delegates claimed in the
letter that none of them was privy to any decision and did not
participate in any processes or proceedings that led to the emergence of
the ‘draft constitution’ or bills.
The delegates added that they had previously expressed their objections to any such project under any guise.
“Moreover and to the best of our
knowledge, we are unaware that the conference has, whether at plenary or
committee stages of its work, taken a decision to draw up a draft
Constitution, authorized or tasked any of its Committees, delegates or
the conference secretariat to do so,” they said.
They, therefore, described the origin of the documents as dubious and questionable.
The aggrieved delegates wondered why the ‘suspicious document’ contained extraneous issues.
Such issues, according to them, were
various provisions pertaining to state creation , boundary adjustment,
referendum to adopt constitution, funding of local government areas,
and deletion of Land Use Act as well as the abrogation of all existing
laws, which were contained in the contentious draft.
During plenary on Wednesday, which
lasted for only 14 minutes, Kutigi announced plans for accelerated
handling of all draft resolutions.
The Chairman, flanked by his deputy,
Prof. Bolaji Akinyemi, Azinge and the other three principal officers,
welcomed the delegates back to the conference.
He apologised for the postponement of
resumption from August 4 to August 11, explaining that it was due to the
enormous work that needed to be done to ensure the completion of the
draft resolutions.
Kutigi reassured delegates of the
inviolability of the draft resolutions; adding, “If there are any
errors, they are human errors and not an attempt by the leadership to
play any game”
He further stated that the draft reports
of the conference were done “to the best of our ability and with all
honesty and diligence.”
