By Josephine Okorocha
On Saturday, 30th of March, 2024, at about 8:49pm, the PRO of the department sent in the new departmental logo and the new constitution to the the NAPS general whatsapp group.
Following the president of the association's opposition to the new constitution which he made known on the general NAPS WhatsApp group chat, it raises the questions;
Did the president give his assent to the new constitution? If he didn’t, what was his reason for not doing so?
The press reached out to the president, who said “no bill was presented to me and I did not give assent to any bill”. So, there is the question of who gave assent to the bill before it became the new constitution?
Going through the new constitution, there are some amendments that requires explanation. Section 5, Article 19, ii and iii states:
ii. The office of the President and Treasurer shall be open to 200 level students only.
iii. 100 level students can only contest for the office of Assistant General Secretary, Public Relations Officer and Financial Secretary.
This provision in the new constitution raises a lot of questions, like:
• Why is the position of the Presidency and Treasurer only open to 200 level students? • What is the reason behind the decision?
• Why can 100 level students contest for the position of PRO and Financial Secretary, when it is clearly stated that contesting for the position requires the aspirant to have a minimum of 2.5 CGPA and it is obvious that 100 level students don’t have CGPA yet?
• If truly the Student Union Constitution supersedes any other departmental or faculty association’s constitution and it is clearly written there that 100 level students can only contest for the position of the Assistant General Secretary as it does not require CGPA, why is the new NAPS constitution going against it?
• Also, the SU constitution states that the posts of the President and Treasurer are open to all levels except 100 level and final year students. So, why is the new NAPS Constitution contradicting it?
Section 6, Article 24, i, states:
"Members of the LRC shall be made up of 4 (four) elected representatives from each level excluding 100l, who will only have 3 (three)."
This is a new addition as the former constitution states that "each level is to have 2 representatives except 200 level that is to have just one."
• Why was the number increased? What were the shortcomings that necessitated the increment?
Also, Article 28 of the same Section 6, states:
"The LRC shall be dissolved after the swearing in of the new honorable members into the council by the outgoing speaker."
This is quite confusing. This is an ambiguous statement and would need clarification. Is it the outgoing speaker that swears-in the new members? Or the outgoing speaker waits for the new members to be sworn-in before dissolving the LRC? So, what exactly is he dissolving when new members have already been sworn-in? And in the case of where the outgoing speaker has graduated, who dissolves the LRC?
This part needs to be clarified as the former constitution states clearly in Article 28 that:
"The LRC shall be dissolved after the swearing in of the new executives council by the newly elected president." This is quite straightforward.
NAPS Press reached out via Whatsapp to the Deputy Speaker of LRC for clarifications as he was the Chairman of the Constitutional Review Committee, but as at the time of this publication, he has not replied even having read the messages, as the messages were double blue-ticked.
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