By Ikechukwu Nnochiri
ABUJA — Constitutional lawyer and former Minister of Education, Professor Ben Nwabueze, SAN, has slammed the legislative arm of government in Nigeria for challenging the propriety of having presidential assent on the purported amended version of the 1999 constitution, insisting that it would be needless to bother the Supreme Court with such triviality.

Nwabueze, who is a senior member of the Inner-Bar of the Nigerian judiciary, bared his mind on the controversial matter while addressing newsmen at the end of his 2010 Public Lecture Series on Constitutional law, held in Abuja. He stressed that it would be unreasonable for the National Assembly to over-flog the issue by going ahead with its plans to approach the apex court for an interpretation of the ruling delivered by a Federal High Court in Lagos.

It will be recalled that the high court presided over by Justice Okechukwu Okeke, on November 8, 2010, held that the purported amendments to the 1999 Constitution remained inchoate and inapplicable in Nigeria, pending when the approval of President Goodluck Jonathan is secured.

The said Judgment was sequel to a suit filed by a former President of the Nigerian Bar Association, NBA, Mr. Olisa Agbakoba, who dragged the two chambers of the legislature to court over their blatant refusal to forward the amended constitution to the president for his assent.

According to Prof. Nwabueze, “After my over 50 years practice as a constitutional lawyer, it baffles me how members of the National Assembly thought they can successfully amend the constitution without presidential assent.

“I personally asked the NBA to sue them over the issue and now judgment is down in the suit filed by Agbakoba, two more are yet to come and I wonder how many appeals the defendants are ready to file at the Supreme Court.

“What will it take them to forward the document to the president for his assent, is it not unreasonable on their part, knowing that it will take more effort to pursue the case at the apex court than it will take them to secure the requisite assent needed to make the entire exercise valid”, he queried.

While denouncing the recent call for the creation of constitutional courts in the country, Prof. Nwabueze insisted that, “creating a separate court to handle constitutional matters will be absolutely unnecessary, what we need is a division of the Supreme Court devoted to only constitutional cases, with selected judges appointed to preside over it.

“There is obviously a lack of specialisation in this country where everybody claims to be a constitutional expert.”

When you read judgments delivered by some of the judges, you will be amazed at their poverty of knowledge, constitutional law is not just something for every Judge to handle” he added.