Guardian

DEPUTY President of the Senate and Chairman, Senate Committee on Constitution Review, Senator Ike Ekweremadu has called on Nigerians to take advantage of the ongoing short message service and online opinion poll in the ongoing constitution review project to express their views on critical matters.

According to a statement issued by his Special Adviser on Media, Uche Anichukwu, Ekweremadu made the call when he briefed the media and publicity team of the committee in Abuja at the weekend.

Senator Ekweremadu said the opinion poll was in line with the promise and commitment of the committee to popular participation, inclusivity and transparency in the ongoing constitution amendment process.

He emphasized that the major aims of the poll were to “demystify constitution-making, get more Nigerians involved, and correct the wrong perception of constitution-making as an elite’s affair.”

H added: “We want to discourage the usual situation where a vocal and privileged few expropriate the voices of the rest of the people, foist their personal opinions and narrow interests on the polity, claiming same to be the views of their people.

“We took cognisance of the appreciable teledensity in the country that makes the GSM service available to an average citizen and thought that we should seize the platform to give the Nigerian masses yet another novel opportunity beyond the public hearings we conducted at national, zonal and constituency levels to make inputs into matters that concern both them and their posterity.”

Ekweremadu who expressed satisfaction with the “avalanche of responses from Nigerians” so far, said the SMS voting was “free as the committee had already pre-paid for every text to the short cod.”

“The system is simple as all Nigerians need to do is to respond to the advertised questions by texting ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to the short code- 20052- or alternatively, visit the Opinion Poll corner on the committee’s website- www.constitutionreviewng.org, cast their votes and possibly leave a comment.”, he added.

He said the results be subsequently analyzed and presented to the public and expressed belief that members of the National Assembly would find such inputs helpful as they would assist them to gauge the pulse of the ordinary Nigerians on issues at stake.