Nigerian parliament to collate citizens views ahead of constitution amendment

The Nigerian parliament has said arrangement is in top gear to collate the views of citizens ahead of an amendment of the country's constitution.

In a statement reaching Xinhua on Wednesday, the parliament said public contributions would be welcomed at a two-day summit with stakeholders.

The statement said the parliament's ad hoc committee on constitution review, organizers of the meeting, will give the general public a chance to add their inputs to the Constitution Alteration Bill, the fourth of its kind since the constitution was enacted in 1999.

Deputy parliament speaker Yusuf Lasun, who heads the ad hoc constitution review committee, said report of the summit would be personally signed by President Muhammadu Buhari to facilitate the quick amendment of the constitution by the parliament.

"This time around, we have adopted a system whereby we will present the bill for ascent batch by batch instead of the whole exercise," said parliament leader.

Calls for the amendment of Nigeria's 1999 constitution had led to three earlier amendments.

The Nigerian parliament said the forthcoming modification, unlike previous exercises, would be in piecemeal, instead of previous ones which were in a single bill. Endit