Chairman of the National Assembly Constitution Review Committee, Ovie Omo-Agege, says six months after 44 constitution bills were passed and transmitted to state assemblies, 25 of them have failed to act on the bills.
He said only 11 out of the 36 state assemblies have demonstrated independence and loyalty to the country by considering the bills.
The 11 states include Abia, Akwa Ibom, Anambra, Delta, Edo, Kaduna, Katsina, Kogi, Lagos, Ogun and Osun.
Omo-Agege disclosed this while addressing a joint press conference of the Senate and House of Representatives at the National Assembly in Abuja on Tuesday.
He said the Conference of Nigerian Speakers had vowed that the remaining states would not pass the bills until the four bills proposed by the state assemblies were passed.
The bills proposed by the state assemblies include; bills to establish state police; establish State Judicial Council; streamline the procedure for removing the presiding officers of state houses of assembly, and institutionalise legislative bureaucracy in the 1999 Constitution.
Omo-Agege, however, alleged that the governors were in charge of the letter which he described as the “hands of Esau and voice of Jacob,” saying state governors were behind the action of the speakers.
He noted that the National Assembly arrived at the 44 constitutional amendment bills after several meetings and engagements with the state houses of assembly.
Journalists at the press conference had reminded Omo-Agege that the Senate did not consider the bill for state police, let alone vote on it.
Omo-Agege, however, explained that the bill was killed at the committee level even before it got to the Senate since the members of the committee voted it down.
President of the Nigerian Labour Congress, Ayuba Wabba; the National President of the National Union of Local Government Employees, called on state governors to stop interfering with the legislative activities of state assemblies.
