Senate To Constitute Constitutional Review Committee Soon – Lawan
BY AMOS DUNIA, ABUJA – President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan on Wednesday said the 9th Senate’s Constitution Review Committee would soon be put in place.
Lawan explained that the upper legislative chamber has not been set up before now because the Senate has been pre-occupied with other issues like the 2020 budget, stressing that there is the will and determination to carry out reforms.
The Senate President, who stated these when he received in audience, the European Union Ambassador to Nigeria and ECOWAS, Ketil Karlsen, said; “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 expressed appreciation to the EU for the support it has been extending to Nigeria particularly in the areas of the electoral process and political development and cooperation.
In his words; “Our democracy since 1999 has received a lot of support from the EU and this is making very positive impact. The relationship between the EU and the Nigerian government is not like it is with other organizations.
“We also have relationship at the level of 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 appealed to the 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 the EU is for many years very significant partner of Nigeria and expressed the hope that the current leadership of the EU will “be able to establish even deeper relationship with Nigeria.”
