SAN FRANCISCO, July 29, (THEWILL) – The Senate President, Bukola Saraki, has stated that the bill on the devolution of power still may still scale through when revisited after the national assembly returns from recess.
He said this on Saturday while addressing journalists in Ilorin shortly after receiving a delegation of the ‘I Support Not So Young to Run’ group, saying all hope is not lost on the matter as the Senate might review its stand on resumption from recess.
THEWILL recalls that the upper legislative chamber had voted against the bill on power devolution during its recent voting on constitutional amendments and came under attacks from many Nigerians for its decision to reject more powers to the states.
But Saraki said there’s still hope for the bill and blamed the situation on what he called misunderstanding of the concept of devolution of power.
“The fact that the devolution bill lost that day does not mean it will not scale through after the recess,” he said.
“As you know that in the senate we have three senators representing each state of the federation and the Federal Captial Territory (FCT). Whatever we do there, we must engage and have a feedback from our constituencies.
“I believe that if this constitutional amendment had come about eight months ago, the devolution bill would have been passed easily. But I think we must be honest with ourselves that presently, there is a lot of mistrust in the country.
“The air is very polluted. Let us be very frank and that blame must be all round. What happened was that a lot of people misread or misunderstood or were suspicious of what the devolution bill was all about.
“Whether it was restructuring in one way or another kind of restructuring. And Senators made a lot of appeals that they were yet to consult with their constituencies. And you can see with what is happening, I think there was a meeting in Kaduna where it was clear that certain parts of the country wanted more time to understand what devolution is all about.
“It is clear that not all senators were on board. My advice is that we cannot bully those senators that were not on board as this country belongs to all of us.
“Nobody can rattle another person out of the country. What we must do is dialogue, and let all understand that it is for the making of a modern Nigeria and that it is not in any way going to undermine any part of the country.”
He appealed for calm from those who feel disappointed by the development, saying: “the majority of Nigerians must be on the same page. Even if half of the country wants it, it will not scale through. What we can do is to lobby and cajole the other percentage that is required.
“What I am saying in essence is that we have not foreclosed the devolution of powers bill. Nothing is foreclosed in this exercise. It was defeated as at that day but it does not mean it will be defeated tomorrow.”
The senate president further commended the youth for their perseverance in seeing that the ‘Not Too Young To Run’ bill was passed.
“You went through the process in making sure that something you believe in scale through. Even when it looked as if it was going down you were not perturbed,” he added.
“You did not resort to abuses and went about lobbying and with the support of the national assembly it scaled through. Both senate and House of Representatives believe that is good for our democracy.”
