5th December, 2019
President of the Senate, Ahmed Ibrahim Lawan, on Wednesday explained why the upper legislative chamber was yet to set up a committee on the review of the Nigerian Constitution.
Lawan said the Constitutional Review Committee had not been set up because the Senate was 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 would 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 was there.
Lawan expressed appreciation for 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 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 through 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 was for many years very significant partner of Nigeria and expressed the hope that the current EU leadership will “be able to establish even deeper relationship with Nigeria.”