DEPUTY President of the Senate and Chairman of the Committee on Review of the Constitution, Ike Ekweremadu, Monday said none of the applications for creation of states has complied with the due processes stipulated in the constitution.

Briefing journalists in Abuja, Ekweremadu also declared that work on the constitution review has reached an advanced stage, adding that his committee would submit its report on the exercise before the end of this week.

“I believe that God willing, by this week, we should be laying on the table the report of the Senate Committee on Constitution Review. Our objective is to ensure that by this time, we should be able to submit the report, probably discuss it and pass it at the Senate, and then we should be able to push it to the House of Representatives and the states assemblies respectively.

“We are hoping that they will be able to move as fast as we are doing so that hopefully, we will be able to achieve our July deadline.”

On state creation, he said what have been done so far by many state creation applicants breach the procedures dictated by the constitution.

Ekweremadu said: “People think they will come to Abuja and submit memoranda and the National Assembly will deliberate on it and then subsequently announce that so and so states have been created. Unfortunately that is not the case.

“What happens is that you have to receive request pursuant to Section 8 of the constitution. When we receive request, that request must, as a matter of constitutional requirement, have the signature of two-third of the local government of the affected area requesting for the state. That includes the councillors and the chairmen of the council from the area requesting the state. And these must be elected councillors and chairmen because the constitution did not envisage caretaker. If it is found out that they are not elected chairmen, that mean that they have not fulfilled that obligation. ” According to Ekweremadu, there must be signature of the two-third of the state assembly members from those respective areas requesting for a state. Then, there will be two-third signature of the National Assembly.

“But what has happened now is that our traditional rulers, out of the love for their people, quickly signed the request for creation of state and come and submit in Abuja without looking at what the constitution says. They are not the ones who should be signatories, it has to be parliamentarians. My own understanding of the constitution is that it is not just going to be parliamentarians but serving parliamentarian.”




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The parliamentarians argue on NL about how they needed an additional state so badly yet they left all the processes to their illiterate monarchs who lacked the knowledge about state creation !

Unforturnately, Mr Ike failed in his duty for not informing and eduacting us duely before our submission of Memoranda though he is representing us. Is it because he is against or for the state creation? Is it not the duty of the legislators to educate their ppl on modalities for state creation? What is the purpose of 'constituency allocations' or 'get-to-meets'? However they want it, a state needs to be created to right the fundamental flaw- modalities/legislative huddles or not.

It is funny how thorough the national assembly is being concerning the requirements for state creation. Ironically, only Mid-West Region was created by due process. Does it mean that somehow, each of the existing 36 states is an illegal entity?

It may help if there are guidelines on what kind of geographical space can constitute a state, relative to ethnicity, population, history, etc

IMO, at the national level, regions should constitute federating units, and internal divisions of these regions should be left to the regional governments