The Senate has resolved to harmonize the different versions and copies of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria following a motion moved by Sen. Chukwuka Utazi (PDP: Enugu) at its plenary session of Tuesday, April 11th 2017. Sen. Utazi had expressed concern over the existence of various versions of the Constitutions making it an unreliable source of law and susceptible to misinterpretation.

Elaborating on the matter, the lawmaker informed the Senate that the Constitution had undergone three successful alterations in July 2010, November 2010 and March 2011 respectively to ensure its provisions conformed to democratic practices and realities. However, he highlighted that since then, there had been no attempt to embed the alterations into the Constitution as one document as the alterations currently exist as separate appendages. In addition, he highlighted the various inconsistencies in some versions of the 1999 Constitution in circulation. For instance, in some versions, Section 84 of the Principal Act ended with subsection (6), while others ended with subsection (7).

Following his submissions, the Senate mandated its Committee on Judiciary, Human Rights and Legal Matters to liaise with the National Judicial Council, the Office of the Attorney General of the Federation and the Law Reform Commission to constitute a Law Reform Committee mandated with the following objectives:

• Withdrawing copies of the different versions of the Constitution in circulation; and
• Authorizing the printing and distribution of the authentic version of the Constitution with the various alterations entrenched.