By the end of May, the tenure of the current set of legislators would come to an end. A new set of lawmakers should be sworn-in early June to start off the seventh Senate or what will be called the Seventh Session of the National Assembly.

Notwithstanding the fact there is hardly time left for the current set of lawmakers, a lot can still be done to salvage the several tottering sectors of the nation’s socio-economic and political life.

The current Senate and, indeed, the National Assembly started on a hopeful note in 2007, when experienced Senator David Mark emerged in the saddle. The senators set a target of a holistic review of the constitution for themselves and they actually started work on that.

After emerging President of the Senate in June 2007, a Constitution Review Committee was readily put in place, but soon, politics crept in and what was supposed to be pursued with all vigour and dedication started floundering.

There was the politics of leadership of the Joint Committee, orchestrated by members of the House of Representatives, which initially was played under the table. The untoward politics dragged the setting up of the Joint Committee on Constitution Review (JCCR) for more than a year until it was eventually inaugurated in November 2008.

At the end of the whole show, including the open show of shame orchestrated by honourable members in Minna, Niger State, when they abandoned a retreat on the review exercise, only little could be achieved.

The little that was achieved in terms of constitution review today stands as the example of a bold effort in constitution engineering in this country, as it represents the first time the nation would be completing the amendment process in 12 years.

Now that the current lawmakers who achieved that feat are winding down their tenure, the time has come for the institution of concrete safeguards in the lawmaking process.

As we speak, no fewer than 100 bills are lying in wait between the two chambers of the National Assembly. While some of them have been passed by the House of Representatives, others were passed by the Senate. But because the nation runs a bi-camera legislature, the laws have to be passed in the two chambers before they can be sent for presidential assent.

In the past, a convention was adopted which makes one chamber to adopt any of the laws duly passed by the other chamber as its own and ratify such only through the third and final reading. In this era, however, the sort of camaraderie that exists between the Senate and the House was lacking until lately. At the start of his tenure, the Honourable  Dimeji Bankole-led House of Representatives set itself on an ego trip which made it to clash with the Senate. The result was an uncomplimentary number of losses incurred on the nation, especially in the passage of several benefitial laws.

Now that sanity has prevailed in the relationship between the two chambers, a law can be passed to institutionalise the practice whereby laws duly passed by one chamber would only be ratified by the other chamber through the third and final reading.

If that law is passed by the two chambers, the nearly 100 bills waiting for passage between the two houses would be promptly passed for presidential assent.

The lawmakers should also review their rules and set aside any that serve against prompt delivery of laws to the Nigerian public since the main business of the National Assembly is to make good laws for good governance of the country.

Rules, such as one that makes bills that are not completed in a tenure to start all over again, should be necessarily amended to safeguard crucial bills, which might have been worked on by one assembly, but could not be finally passed into law. The lawmakers should not also shy away from emphasising rules that emphasise ranking. A new senator should not be allowed to contest the Senate presidency or even principal officer positions, if the chamber is to move forward in the right direction.

Again, the lawmakers should continue on the process of constitution amendment since the last exercise did not address the fundamentals of the structure of this country. The issue of state creation, revenue formula and resource control are issues that fundamentally affect the country and they should not be swept under the carpet in the name of politicking.

If the rules are properly amended, the new Senate can easily continue from the spot where the Sixth Assembly would terminate.