Deputy Speaker of House of Representatives, Yusuf
Lasun, has assured that the National Assembly will re-visit the issue of
devolution of power in the Constitution Amendment process. He gave the assurance on Sunday at St.
Petersburg, Russia, while speaking to newsmen on the sidelines of the
137th Inter-Parliamentary Union(IPU) Assembly.
The deputy
speaker, who is part of the Nigerian delegation to the assembly, said the
reactions that followed the failure of devolution of power to scale through
during voting on constitution amendment was an indication of how critical
it is. He said the resolve to re-visit
the issue was in line with the 137th IPU theme — “Promoting Cultural
Pluralism and Peace through Inter-faith and Inter-ethnic Dialogue”. According
to him, devolution of power has been part of the call for restructuring of the
country to ensure adequate distribution of resources, which will in turn ensure
peaceful co-existence.
He said “the
Nigerian parliament has been mindful of the things agitating the minds of the
people. If you recall, about two months ago, we tried to amend some sections of
the Constitution. “It was consequent upon that event that we now know that what
is left in Nigeria today is to try to see how we can devolve power to different
tiers of government. “We voted on so many items and people were able to screen
through and said though we passed some items, the most important one, which
is devolution of power did not scale through.
“And to show that
parliament in Nigeria has been up to the task, we promised that in the
next few months, we are going to re-visit the issue so that we can have peace
in our country.” On increasing conflicts
in the world, the deputy speaker said all hands must be on deck to find lasting
solutions to the problems that caused conflicts across the globe. He added that
“in the last few years, we have been feeling the intense heat of
extremism, Xenophobic attacks, the issue of racism has started rearing its head
again and we also have the issue of intolerance. “These are the issues that the
whole world is facing today and everybody is trying to find a way to
settle conflicts.
settle conflicts.
“This is
because it is in the midst of peace that we can have democracy and
without democracy, it is very difficult to have development. “So, we have
to first of all find a way of achieving peace, then from achieving peace we can
begin to have development. Lasun said
that the 8th National Assembly was poised to making laws that would
promote peace and unity, as well as take advantage of its oversight powers to
dialogue with different sections of the country. He further said that the national assembly
would continue to engage the executive toward ensuring that it improved on its
policies and programmes to enable the public to feel the positive impact
of government. On relationship between the executive and the legislature,
Lasun said Nigerians had yet to come to the understanding that the parliament
played an important role in governance.
He said the
parliament that defined democracy ought to be recognised as integral part of
governance, adding that Nigerians often criticised the parliament and
assumed that it was by doing so that there would be good governance. He added that “by supporting the parliament
to grow, you actually grow the democracy too because if you don’t support
parliament, you are not likely to be able to grow your democracy. “So, a lot of
the people in executive do not understand the fact that it is parliament that
defines democracy and whatever you want to do. “People must understand the fact
that parliament is the most important part of democracy.” The 137th IPU, which
has 173 parliaments in attendance, is scheduled to take place between Oct. 14
and 18.
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