An election monitoring group, Centre for Transparency Advocacy (CTA) has called on the National Assembly to bequeath Nigerians, a Constitution that will address and protect human rights of every individual.
Executive Director, CTA, Ms Faith Nwadishi, made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Thursday.
Nwadishi said that the group was looking at a Constitution that would address and protect rights of every individual, especially the right of women to participate in building democracy.
“This is such that we do not have a one-sided participation where you have few people, who are participating and the other people not participating when it comes to gender balancing and inclusion in the country.
“We want to have a Constitution that is agreeable by everybody and understandable by everybody. We do not want to have a Constitution that is so bulky.
“The Constitution is not supposed to be a document, where you capture all the rules, at least major principles, key principles that people will understand.
“The Constitution does not have to specifically say, if you flout this rule, if you do that, at least we have that moral understanding and most importantly, we are looking at a Constitution that addresses and protects the human rights of every individual,” she said.
She called for a legal document that would include true federalism as a system of government.
“If we say we are Federal Republic of Nigeria, we should actually run it like a true federalism rather than having true federalism in the book and some other parts looking at a unitary government.
“There has to be delineation of power between the Federal, state and the local government areas,” she added.
The executive director equally advocated local government autonomy to have a local government where people would be responsible for their development.
NAN reports that the National Assembly is currently amending some areas of the 1999 Constitution which the Senate itemised to include; Gender Equity/Increased Participation of Women and Vulnerable Groups in Governance.
Other themes include; the Federal Structure in Governance, Power Devolution and
Local Government Administration/Local Government Autonomy. (NAN)
