THE Deputy Senate President, Mr Ike Ekweremadu, on Thursday, shed light on the status of the Nigerian Constitution, stating that the amendments proposed to the constitution had become operational for now, minus the court intervention.

He said the amendments would remain valid until a court of law thought otherwise and then set them aside, as according to him, the National Assembly had done its bit to amend the 1999 Constitution and would not be bothered by any side comments on the amended parts.

The Deputy Senate President made this known during his visit to the national headquarters of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) over the recent fire incident that gutted the place, explaining that any Nigerian who felt aggrieved by the amendment carried out in the constitution could go to court.

Said he: "The amendment is operational. Until they seek legal interpretation,  the amendment has become operational. Our business is to make laws and once those laws are made, the law is operational until it is set aside by the court.

“We are not going to worry ourselves about that as far as we are concerned. We have done our job. If anybody thinks otherwise he could go to court and until the court makes pronouncement on it, that is law and that is what Nigerians will obey.”

Ekweremadu gave the reason both the Senate and the House of Representatives granted the financial request of N87 billion to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for the next general election. Both chambers, he explained, approved the sum in order to encourage INEC to conduct the most transparent election in history.

He said the National Assembly had initial suspicion about the huge sum demanded by INEC, but resolved to approve it in the interest of transparent elections, which according to him, Nigerians were clamouring for.

According to him, “INEC wanted N87 billion and we approved it. Even though we had reservations about the figure, we needed to support them to do a good job. We hope they apply the money appropriately.”

On the fire that gutted the conference hall of the PDP secretariat complex last weekend, the deputy Senate president said it was time the ruling party resolved to execute its plan to move to a permanent place in order to avoid such incidents.

He described the fire incident as a kind of baptism of fire for the ruling party, which, in his view, would enable it to pay attention to problems of construction in Nigeria as he asked the party to indicate the kind of support it expected from members of the National Assembly on renovation of the burnt  part secretariat complex.

The governor of Niger State, Dr Babangida Aliyu, also visited the PDP national secretariat. He lamented that the fire incident had succeeded in calling the attention of authorities to similar problems, which, he noted, were rampant in Nigeria.

Addressing the media after inspecting the complex, the Niger State governor threw his weight behind the reform initiative of the PDP national headquarters in the area of entrenching party supremacy in its operations.

He said: “In every developed democracy, the party is the supreme organ. The party is the foundation. The party screens candidates. The party sponsors candidates under its manifesto. If a governor, let’s say from Niger, is doing a good thing, we expect all other PDP governors in other states to be doing the same thing, because they have a common denominator.

"But where there is  emptiness or where there is vacuum, everybody begins to do his own thing to the extent that you find people using other people’s manifestos instead of their own.”

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