State Police Bill Will Not Suffer Recess Delay – Senate

The Senate has assured Nigerians that work on the harmonisation of the State Police Bill will continue despite the National Assembly’s annual recess. The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Media and Publicity, Yemi Adaramodu, recently had his say while speaking to the press, and Nigerians have been reacting.

Insisting that legislative committees remain fully operational and are determined to fast-track the constitutional amendment, Yemi said that the ongoing recess will not delay the harmonisation process between the Senate and the House of Representatives.

He added that while plenary sessions had been suspended until lawmakers return on September 14, committee work would continue uninterrupted to ensure the legislation is concluded within the shortest possible time.

His words, “Our holiday does not stop harmonisation since we have committees. The National Assembly will resume on September 14 if we have anything to do. So, the recess doesn’t stop the committees of the two chambers from meeting.

Whenever we have holidays like this, we use the opportunity to attend to our legislative duties and oversight in the relevant committees. The only thing is that we will not go to plenary.

If we have emergency committee matters to handle, we still do that. But we don’t go to plenary.

It’s the constitutional review committee since it’s a constitutional matter. We have a constitutional review committee, which is headed by the Deputy Senate President, Senator Jibrin Barau.

Oh, yes! That one is sure. You know that initially I said that in the life of this 10th Assembly, we are going to make sure all these constitutional amendments are passed for them to come to bear.

The state police matter is not even the only one that we are dealing with. But this one is an emergency because it is a popular demand by Nigerians.

So it has already become more of a national debate and discourse. So we cannot just sit and not attend to it expeditiously.

If we want to take all items, maybe about 10 to 15 items together, it might take a long time. There will be some argument and debate up and down. Then we will also subject it to public hearing and other processes. Definitely, it can delay issues.

So we don’t want to make the state police matter a porous debate. That’s why we just singled it out to deal with and do it expeditiously before transmitting it to the executive for assent.

On the state Assemblies, you will recall that I told you that we have already met with the Speakers of the entire 36 states.

You know we have to carry them along and let them know that this is coming to you. On their part, they have already expressed interest in ensuring a speedy action, with a promise not to delay or maybe take a long time to attend to it.

In fact, the feedback we got from them is positive. Again, the Nigerian Governors’ Forum had already sat earlier on the matter. Recently, the governors themselves signalled that they are very much interested in this bill.

So since it happened like that, and 36 Houses of Assembly had already keyed into it, definitely it’s supposed to be seamless.

Now that the Reps have played their part, our committees will fine-tune them. After that one, then it goes straight to the states.

So I don’t think this can take more than maybe two months, possibly. I think by September, we should have been able to get all these things done.”