Supreme Court Can’t Prevent Any Constitution Amendment – Senate

The Nigerian Senate on Sunday said that the Supreme Court lacked the power to stop it and the House of Representatives from amending the 1999 Constitution.

 

The Chairman, Senate Committee on Information and Public Affairs, Eyinnaya Abaribe, disclosed this while the House Deputy Majority Leader, Leo Ogor, described the court’s order that the status quo be maintained as a “temporary setback.”

 

A Supreme Court seven member panel led by Chief Justice Mahmud Mohammed last Thursday fixed June 18 for further hearing on the case, by then the tenure of the current assembly would have ended.

Abaribe, in an interview with journalists in Abuja, said that the supreme court was wrong to stop the lawmakers in the performance of their legislative duties.

He said, “ The law does not allow one arm of the government to stop another arm of government from performing its duties.

 

“The Supreme Court cannot stop us from legislating and if they say that it (Supreme Court) is stopping us from making laws, it is misleading and it amounts to misreading the powers of the Supreme Court.”

 

But Ogor said on Sunday that the review of the constitution was not over in spite of the decision of the Supreme Court halting the process.

 

Ogor told Punch in Abuja that the apex court only directed the parties in the matter to “maintain the status quo” and did not imply that the powers of the National Assembly to amend the constitution had been withdrawn.

 

He said, “It is not yet over because the process of seeking interpretation willl continue.

“The National Assembly lawyers will follow it up for the remaining part of the issues involved and we are hopeful that judgment will be delivered in our favour at the end of the day.”

However, Ogor said that the incoming 8th Assembly would carry on. The lawmaker explained that the 8th Assembly will not need to start the process of amending the constitution from the beginning if the case was decided in favour of the National Assembly, but would simply re-commit the bill to the Committee of the Whole for passage.

 

President Goodluck Jonathan had rejected the amendments made to the 1999 Constitution by the National Assembly because the amendment did not meet the provisions of Section 9 (3) of the 1999 Constitution.

 

But members of the House of Representatives had repeated that the legislators met the constitutional requirements on the process to amend the constitution.