NAN-H-94
Amendment
Lizzy Okoji
Abuja, March 28, 2017 (NAN) The Federal Ministry of Justice has called for the urgent amendment of the Nigerian Constitution and speedy domestication of the Abidjan Declaration to end statelessness in Nigeria.
Dr Francis Oni, an Assistant Director and representative of the Ministry made the call on Tuesday in Abuja at the commemoration of the second anniversary of the Abidjan Declaration.
The event was organised by the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Economic Commission of West African States (ECOWAS) with the theme “Joining Hands to End Statelessness in West Africa, One Stateless Person Too Many”.
According to Oni, for the declarations and conventions to be properly adhered to and implemented in Nigeria, there is an urgent need to amend the constitution to take cognisance of statelessness.
He said that the ministry, under the leadership of the Attorney-General and Solicitor-General of the Federation, would do the needful for the document to be domesticated.
“Chapter 3 of the Constitution, which is on citizenship, clearly enumerates the procedures for acquiring Nigerian citizenship.
“As it stands presently, there is no provision in the constitution for statelessness.
“The Federal Ministry of Justice will, therefore, do all it can to ensure that all impediments in Nigeria’s implementation of the declaration are removed.
“This is so that Nigeria will join the rest of ECOWAS member-states and, indeed, the rest of the world to eliminate statelessness in all ramifications.
“Today’s occasion therefore, provides a reminder and a fulcrum for Nigeria to, as a matter of urgency, join the rest of the world to accede to the two national conventions and, where required, domesticate them.
“This, we believe, will form the basis for the elimination of statelessness from Nigeria and the region.”
Oni said that the Abidjan Declaration on the eradication of statelessness in ECOWAS member-states was a welcome development, especially noting the prevalence of stateless cases in the region.
He said that the phenomenon was even more compounded with the absence of a statistical data on the number of stateless persons in the region and inadequate information on the root causes.
According to Oni, the declaration portrays the guidelines for ECOWAS member-states and charts the course for the direct implementation of the international convention.
In her remark, Dr Fatimata Dia-Sow, Commissioner for Social Affairs and Gender, ECOWAS Commission, said there was the need for countries in the region to amend their nationality laws as it concerned statelessness.
She said statelessness stemmed from issues related to nationality and that its main causes were gaps in nationality laws and policies that had rendered a lot of people without a nationality of any country.
Dia-Sow explained that underlying these problems was the weakness of civil registration systems as only five of the 15 member-states in the region had a birth registration rate of less than 50 per cent.
According to the Commissioner, gender discrimination and administrative practices also create problems of discrimination.
She said that since the adoption of the declaration, progress had been made in so many areas, especially with the commitments of member-states to reform their constitutions with appropriate safeguards against statelessness.
Another speaker, Mrs Bridgette Mukanga-Eno, urged the Federal Government to step up its intervention to address the condition of its citizens in the Bakassi Peninsula.
She explained that there was work to be done to prevent their future generation from being stateless.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that more than 45,000 people from Cote D’ivoire and Benin Republic have obtained identity or nationality documents since the adoption of the declaration in 2015. (NAN)
LIZ/HAS/NKO
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Edited By Hajia Sani/Nkechi Okoronkwo