The House of Representatives during plenary on Wednesday, 15 October voted on the Conference Committee Report on a Bill for an Act to further alter the provisions of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and for other matters connected therewith. The report, which was laid before the House on Tuesday, 14 October, was billed for voting and members turned out massively to form the constitutionally required quorum for the voting to take place. Before proceeding with the voting exercise, the Speaker, Rt. Hon. Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, confirmed to the House that out of the 360 members, 261 were present. He said the number was good enough to allow for voting on the constitution alteration report.
After a brief closed session to address some concerns of members on the modality and procedural technicalities of the process of constitution amendment, the House resumed an open session to vote on the report. The exercise was done manually and for record purposes, members were asked to write down their names, state of origin, signature and the Federal Constituency they represent. The votes were duly collated and the Speaker announced the result thereafter. The result showed that out of the 261 members that participated in the exercise, 252 voted in the affirmative, 8 voted against and 1 abstained. With the majority vote on the affirmative, the report was passed and adopted by the House.
The Speaker directed the Clerk of the House to transmit the adopted report to each of the 36 State Assemblies, as it’s stipulated in the Standing Orders and Rules of the House.
In another development, just before the end of the day’s plenary, the House received and adopted the Conference Report on a Bill for an Act to make provisions for the prevention of HIV and AIDS-based discrimination and to protect the fundamental rights and dignity of people living with HIV and AIDS. The clean copy of the Bill was presented before the House by Hon. Joseph Haruna Kigbu.