Oshiomhole wants indigene, settler dichotomy tackled
SENATE President, David Mark, has debunked rumour of hidden agenda by the National Assembly in the plan to review the 1999 Constitution.
Meanwhile, Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State has said Nigeria needs a constitution that will protect the right of the people to live in any part of the country.
During an interaction with members of the House of Representatives from the state and Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) caucus leaders at the Government House, Benin City, the governor said the indigene-settler dichotomy, which divides the people should be adequately addressed.
According to him, in a statement, "Edo people are energetic and enterprising and reside in all parts of the country. We should therefore work out a constitution that removes discrimination in all guises so that people are free to live and thrive wherever they choose to live in. People cannot continue to be strangers in a place they choose to live and settle in."
Speaking in Lagos on Sunday at a public hearing on the constitution review, Mark disclosed: "The National Assembly has no hidden agenda. Nobody can say what will happen and what will not happen. There are so many topics that are before us, but we may not be able to take all of them in one single sweep. My experience in the National Assembly since 1999 has shown that when we try to chew so much at a time, then nothing will happen.
"We will try and prioritise all the issues that we know and then, the ones we can take, we will take. I will suggest, with no ulterior motive, that there are two critical areas that I think we must look into. Any amendment that will improve security should be prioritised. Any amendment that will bring development nearer and quicker to the people must be seen as a priority. These are my simple suggestions."
Commenting on the agitation for state police, Mark said what is paramount should be the protection of life and property throughout the country.
"My positions on state and federal police have not changed, but the important thing here is for us to guarantee security for every Nigerian, it is important. Whatever we are doing we must ensure that there is security of lives and we must do that without fear or favour. If there is no peace, there can be no development and if the only way we can provide peace is to ensure that we have enough policemen in this country, then we must do it; we want to avoid bringing military men to the streets now and then," he stated.
Mark spoke as the House of Representatives' Deputy Majority Leader, Leo Ogor, alerted the nation of plans by some politicians to scuttle the on-going constitution review exercise.
Briefing journalists in Abuja at the weekend, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) lawmaker from Delta State stated that some "desperate politicians had resorted to some undemocratic and dirty means of rubbishing the noble objectives of the constitution amendment exercise.
He said the negative attitude towards the constitution amendment was the reason the success recorded by the just concluded constituency public sessions held in all 360 federal constituencies were misinterpreted as mere political jamboree in some quarters.
"I can tell you that some evil political forces are at work to scuttle the good intentions of the House in carrying out these constituency public sessions. In my constituency, when some of these desperate politicians saw people trooping to the venue of the public session, they simply turned their faces away, only to describe it as political jamboree later.
"The same desperate politicians later went to town with the story that I engaged one of my constituents in a physical combat and kept insisting on it even when the person they alleged that I fought with had denied it."
