Strong indications have emerged that female members of the National Assembly will amend and re-introduced the gender related bills which failed to pass on Tuesday.
The bills are expected to come with the second batch of amendments that lawmakers will vote on, in the ongoing review of the 1999 Constitution.
The female lawmakers, specifically in the House of Representatives, who berated their male counterparts for voting against the bills, blamed rejection of the proposals on various reasons.
The lawmakers in the two chambers of the National Assembly had on Tuesday voted on the 68 recommendations by the Joint Senate and House Special Ad Hoc Committee on the Review of the 1999 Constitution.
The gender bills failed to pass despite that Aisha Buhari, wife to the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), on Wednesday last week, stormed the Senate and House chambers in company with female ministers to lobby the lawmakers as the committee laid its report.
Chairman of the House Committee on Women Affairs and Social Development, Adewunmi Onanuga, disclosed that some male lawmakers had disclosed why they moved against the bills, noting that the reactions generated would inspire the review of the bills.
Onanuga said, “For me, there is no going back in the sense that we are going to go back to the drawing board and make it better – performance better, go about it better than what we did. We felt that we did the best that we could but, of course, it did not go the way we wanted, which means that there is room for coming back and making sure that we can do much more than what we have done.
“My people say that patience is never too much. At the end of the day, they will tell you that it was not enough. So, we have to go back, put in more effort and make sure that we come back the next time to put this on the table.”
The lawmaker stated that bills would not wait till the end of the 9th National Assembly, adding that the gender bills would be accommodated in the ongoing Constitution amendment exercise.
Also, the Deputy Chairman, House Committee on FCT Judiciary, Omowumi Ogunlola, stated that the lawmakers would revive the bills.
Ogunlola said, “They are not dead yet; it is still ongoing. It will still go through the two-third of the states (24 of 36); they will have to pass it. We are hoping, believing and praying that something good will come out of it. Afterwards, we will be able to sit down and try to jog things and see how they go.”
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However, Chairman of the House Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Benjamin Kalu, argued that it was not the senators and the representatives that “did the job” but it was “the instruction from their various constituents. This is the truth that must be told,” he stated.
Kalu, while addressing journalists in Abuja on Thursday, said the House would not have passed the bills up to the voting stage if it was not interested in them from the onset.
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