Senator Akin Odunsi (ACN-Ogun) said on Monday in Abuja that the Senate did not at any time vote in favour of underage marriage.
Odunsi said this at an interactive session with members of the senate press corps.
The Senate had been criticised by various groups following its vote to
retain clause 4b in Section 29 of the 1999 Constitution after the
Constitution Review Committee recommended that it be deleted.
Clause 4b states that “any woman who is married shall be deemed to be of full age.”
Odunsi said: “a lot of Nigerians are not getting the story correctly;
the present constitution we are amending has that clause in it.
“Constitution review committee brought their report to the senate chamber; the recommendation was that it should be deleted.
“When we took the first vote, it was passed that underage marriage should be expunged.
“What I believe is that most Nigerians do not appreciate that it has already been existing in the constitution,’’ Odunsi said.
According to him, 60 out of 95 voted for the removal of underage
marriage from our constitution while 35 voted for it to be retained and
by the rules we need 73 votes.
The lawmaker said that in a
democracy, especially with regards to constitution amendment, a certain
number of votes were required and the senate did not meet that
requirement.
Speaking on why the senate voted against local
government autonomy, Odunsi said that giving local government’s autonomy
would create another federating unit.
“The Nigerian federation has
the states as a federating unit; it is argued that to give local
governments autonomy will mean that we have created another federating
unit in the federation.
“So, that will be in conflict with what we
already have and I believe that is the main reason most senators voted
against local government autonomy.’’
He said that the states assemblies needed to be strengthened in order to properly oversee the local governments.
He also spoke on the comment made by the Executive Secretary of the
National Universities Commission (NUC), Prof. Julius Okogie, on the need
to increase tuition fees in universities.
He said that increasing tuition was not the solution to the country’s education needs but strengthening the education system.
“I don’t believe that it is by increasing the cost of tuition that the standard will improve.
“Standards are falling for so many reasons; I don’t think that our education policy is on the right track.
“There was an education policy drafted years ago called 6-3-3-4. We are
still operating it, but not in the spirit it was drafted.
“If it was in the true spirit, we will not have the millions of unemployed graduates in the country,’’ Odunsi said.
He said that the cost of education in the country was already on the high side, and there was no need for an increase.
Source: PMNews
