By Emmanuel Aziken, Political Editor

It was tempting for Senator David Mark to make reference to the usefulness of the recent Constitution and Electoral Act amendments in birthing what he trumped as the free and fair elections of 2011 last Wednesday.

Announcing the formation of a new constitution amendment committee, the Senate President bashfully affirmed that the constitution and other electoral reforms shepherded by the last National Assembly helped in what he framed as the success of the 2011 elections.

“Let me note that constitution amendment remains one of the top priorities of the Seventh Senate. Our success in the electoral reforms is now obvious and has been widely acknowledged after the 2011 general election,” Senator Mark said as he announced the names of 47 men and women in the Senate Committee on Constitution Review.

While what Senator Mark described as fair electoral conduct remains relative in the eyes of many political stakeholders, there is little question that the National Assembly deserves much credit for the electoral reforms that shaped the 2011 elections. It was thus not surprising that the new Senate under Mark’s leadership like the immediate past Senate, is advancing to consolidate the constitution amendments.

Among the major amendments pushed through by the last National Assembly were provisions on the timing of elections, autonomy of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC and a limitation to the period for the arbitration of election disputes.

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reforms

But to what extent the electoral reforms helped in shaping a free and fair poll remains largely unanswered. Lagos lawyer and civil rights activist Bamidele Aturu believes that the amendments pushed by the last National Assembly were remarkably not significant to have tipped the conduct of the elections in a better shape. According to him the personality of the INEC chairman and the humility of the incumbent President during the elections were the more crucial factors.

“The truth of the matter is that one must understand the interplay of the persons and there must be a dialectical relationship between the two. If you have a very bad law and a good personality it must prove very difficult and if you have a bad person and a bad law it is even more dangerous,” Aturu told Vanguard yesterday.

“The amendments were not very fundamental and it was the personality of Jega and his antecedents and we had a President who was more humble and committed to a better process. So, I believe it is the personality of Jega that tipped it and that is not to say that there were not areas of inadequacy,” he said.

Indeed reflective of his conclusion that the election was not wholly free and fair is the fact that it was business as usual in many areas of the Southeast and South-South where outrageous results were reported during some of the elections.

But that is not to take away the credit due to the National Assembly and particularly the past Senate where the steadfastness of Senator Ike Ekweremadu, chairman of the Senate Committee on Constitution Review helped to push the process despite the intrigues and web of controversy between the House of Representatives and the Yar‘Adua administration.

It would be recalled that as the then National Assembly Joint Committee on Constitution Review met in Minna to begin the process of reviewing the constitution in January, 2008, that the meeting was immediately aborted by some agents.

The House of Representatives delegation to the joint committee were ordered out of the meeting allegedly by their leadership on the whimsical excuse that the Deputy Speaker who was leading the House delegation should act as Co-Chairman of the joint committee with Senator Ekweremadu. Senators miffed by the seeming insubordination refused to yield and the House members walked away and so for more than one year the process stalled.

It was later revealed that the Yar‘Adua administration did not want the constitution amendment to proceed at that time an assumption that gained ground following the trenchant opposition by the then Senate Chief Whip, Senator Kanti Bello to the process.

Yar‘Adua it was learnt wanted a comprehensive constitution review during his second term and Senator Bello from Katsina State and close to the presidential villa at that time became a front for that battle. Speaker Dimeji Bankole who was reputedly a close confidant of the late President did not help matters by keeping mute in the face of insinuations that he was at that time being used to scuttle the constitution review exercise.

Remarkably the process stalled until the inception of the Jonathan administration when all including those who impeded the process in the House of Representatives jumped on the trail and even claimed credit for pushing through the review.

Remarkably, the prospects of a smoother exercise this time seem not farfetched.

A less cocky leadership is in position in the House of Representatives and it is welcoming that the new leadership in the Senate and in the House of Representatives announced the names of the review committees on the same day last Wednesday.

Not all are, however, satisfied with the piecemeal amendments as encouraged by Senator Ekweremadu which he claims to have been the pivot for achieving the landmark alterations of last year.

The Pro National Conference Organization, PRONACO yesterday, dismissed the proposed exercise as unhelpful as it urged the National Assembly to move forward with a brand new constitution.

Affirming that the 1999 constitution originally gifted by the last military administration can never be the people’s constitution, PRONACO in a statement said “that the document can never become their own no matter how beautifully amended as the origin and source of the constitution makes it completely irredeemable”

In the statement issued by its spokesman, Olawale Okunniyi PRONACO argued that constitution review in every clime serves the critical objective of political reforms, good governance and internal conflict mitigation

“But in Nigeria it does appear that constitution reforms is only to serve the purpose of ‘jobs for the boys’ and political make believe, not minding the mood and critical state of the nation.”

Reflective of that skepticism is the inclusion of states creation in the agenda of the Senate Constitution review committee.

With many of the states unviable the suspicion of a merry-go-round becomes suspicious.