We’ll Defend Governors’ Immunity -NASS

The House of Representatives’ Special Ad-Hoc Committee on the Review of the 1999 Constitution has explained why it would not review the immunity clause for sitting governors in Nigeria as provided for in the Constitution.

The Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yusuf Lasun, who led members of House’s Special Ad-Hoc Committee to Abeokuta on a three-day retreat on the review of the 1999 Constitution, declared this while fielding questions from newsmen.

The review is entitled, “the Imperatives of Constitution Review/Amendment in Nation Building.”

The deputy speaker, who spoke about issues touched by the committee at the retreat, insisted that “there is nothing wrong in the immunity that is already in the Constitution.”

He said, “It is a no go area” in the on-going review or amendment of the living document of the country.

Lasun noted that the clause does not immune the governors against criminal infractions but only protect them from likely distractions through civil litigations.

According to him, altering or removing the clause as is being clamoured for by Nigerians, would distract the governors from administering their states properly.

“There is nothing wrong in the immunity that is already in the Constitution because it doesn’t say that the person cannot be prosecuted after he has left the office.

“Nobody is immune when it comes to prosecution that borders on criminal charges but if you have to go to take a sitting governor to court on civil matters when governor whose hands lie the lives of the people of the whole state then that will bring distraction to governance.

“The immunity as it is today, we are not going to touch it, I’m not going to deceive you and I’m not going to tell lies. The maximum years a governor stays in office eight years and whatever offence that he might have committed while in office is still as fresh as if it has just been committed yesterday.

“What people must do is to bring out such offences when the governor has left office. So, it is about institutions and individuals been lazy, nothing is shielding anybody from being prosecuted after leaving the office,” Lasun said.

He, however, revealed that the committee had also looked into the report of the 2014 National Conference, and picked the areas that were relevance to the current efforts to amendment of the Constitution.

Lasun explained that the amendments would be presented as separate single bills, and this, he added, would save time, remove all forms of technicalities.