Senate Did Not Authorise Underage Marriage -Senator

The lawmaker also spoke on university tuition fees.

Senator Akin Odunsi (ACN-Ogun) said on Monday in Abuja that the Senate did not at any time vote in favour of underage marriage.

Mr. 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 existed in the constitution,’’ Mr. Odunsi said.

He said 60 out of 95 voted for the removal of the clause from the constitution while 35 voted for it to be retained; the rules requires 73 votes for to pass.

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, Mr. 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.

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.

The lawmaker said 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,’’ Mr. 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.