Constitution Amendment: Reps remove railway, airport, prison from exclusive list

The House of Representatives has removed railway, airport and prison from the exclusive list and placed them on the concurrent list.

The move was made during the voting on the 1999 constitution amendment bill on Tuesday in Abuja.

The bill was titled, “a Bill for an Act to Alter the Provisions of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 to move Railway from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List.”

The lawmakers unanimously voted for the bill as there were no disagreement on the voting pattern.

The House also voted to move Airports from exclusive legislative list to the concurrent legislative list with 283 members voting in favour of the bill, although the constitutional requirement is 240 votes.

The House also deleted prison from the exclusive list and put it in the concurrent list, which means that henceforth, prison would now be run by the various state governments.

The bill was titled, “a Bill for an Act to Alter the Provisions of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 to Delete Prisons in the Exclusive Legislative List and Redesignate it as Correctional Service in the Concurrent Legislative List.”

The House, however, rejected a bill to include Value Added Tax on the exclusive legislative list, with 200 members voted against the bill against 91 in favour while others abstained.