By Ben Agande
ABUJA—IN line with their stand that no court can stop the amendment of the constitution, the Senate, yesterday, commenced the second amendment process to the 1999 Constitution with majority supporting the conduct of the 2011 general elections in April as requested by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC.

The constitution amendment bill which went through the second reading also proposed the termination of governorship election petitions at the Supreme Court.

Deputy Senate President, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, who led the debate on the bill said the amendments sought to accommodate the April dates proposed by INEC for the conduct of the 2011 elections following complaints from the commission that the January date was not tenable.

He said: “You may recall that the first alteration to the Constitution provides that election should hold not earlier than 150 days before the end of tenure of office. With this, the 2011 election would have been held in the month of January. This would have given a gap of four months before the next occupants assume office, and the aim was to give time for the tribunals to deal with cases of election petitions.

“However, the new set of alterations proposed in this Bill, seek to ensure that elections are held not earlier than 90 days and not later than 30 days before the end of tenure of office. This leaves INEC with 60 days: March and April 2011, to conduct elections before the handover date.

It also seeks to ensure that the nation is not enmeshed in the seeming constitutional and electoral quagmire occasioned by the inability of INEC to implement the lofty ideals and philosophy behind the provisions of the Constitution (First Alteration) Act.

Governorship election tribunals

“With this amendment, there will be a reinstatement of governorship election tribunal which the first amendment abrogated. Appeals will go to Court of Appeal from this tribunal. Any party not satisfied with the decision of the Court of Appeal may further appeal to the Supreme Court.”

Senator Chris Anyanwu, expressed fears over the frequency of amendments to the Constitution being sought by INEC saying that the best option was for the time line to be removed from the Constitution.

Her words: “Less than two months after the first amendment was done, we are back again. When we go through this process, will there not be issues tomorrow for another new date? I hope these are all the amendments that we will have to do concerning this election. If it is the time line, that is giving INEC problems, we should remove it and give it to the institution responsible for election to fix it and give us credible election.”

Senator Ahmed Makarfi, PDP, Kaduna said the time for election should be expunged from the Constitution and accommodated in the Electoral Act which would also undergo amendment.

He said: “We should have in the Constitution that election should hold every four years, without any particular time so that in future we won’t have to come back and say we want to amend the Constitution because of time line.”

At the conclusion of debate on the bill, Senate President, Senator David Mark dismissed  allegations that senators were trying to undermine the electoral process by allegedly collecting N20million each to accommodate new amendments to the electoral law.

He said the Senate would not succumb to blackmail and challenged those with relevant information on the allegation to come up with fact to prove the allegations.

Mark said: “All this business of trying to make us look bad in the eyes of the public is unnecessary, it is uncalled for. It is an unnecessary psychological warfare by participants who just want to blackmail us. We will do what we think is the right thing and the best for this country and not to serve the interest of individuals or few people. We will not succumb to blackmail.”