Kwara State Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, in his capacity as Chairman of the Nigeria Governors' Forum, hosted the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Benjamin Kalu, and other key officials working on the current constitutional amendments to the 1999 Constitution on Wednesday night.

During the meeting, the governors pledged their support for the constitutional amendment process. They assured the Deputy Speaker of their collaboration with the legislative arm of government to ensure the amendment progresses smoothly.

In a statement released after the meeting, Hon. Kalu acknowledged the critical role of the 36 state governors in the constitutional review process. He emphasized that the nation's existence depends on the federating units, making the governors indispensable stakeholders.

He said: "The governors are major stakeholders, and without the federating units, there is no Nigeria, and if you ignore them, the wheel of progress towards realizing our objectives with regards to this constitutional review will be slowed down. And we considered it important to come and engage with them, to bring them up to speed, taking them through our work plan, what we have achieved so far and where we are headed. And we have had a robust discussion, and I must say that the governors made beautiful contributions, and they are in support of the constitution review.

"We also informed them that we are going to be visiting their states and the geopolitical zones to harvest the opinions of the members of the public in their various zones with regards to the thematic areas of the constitution review.

"We informed them that we have received about 161 areas to amend in the constitution and we are going to give them the breakdown of all of them in the coming engagement. This won't be the first and last engagement. We are going to have a couple of engagements. This is how we want to do it, differently from how it has been done. So, from the beginning, we want them to have input and we have requested for them to send us an anchor person, like a liaison, the person that will engage with the committee to bring their input closer, faster to the committee than it used to be and also to take our feedback to them. That way, it will make it easier that by the time this constitution review gets to the States, it won't be a difficult issue having the Houses of Assembly do what they are supposed to do with regard to the constitutional provisions and the role they need to play with the two-thirds voting for it.

"The governors spoke generally about the constitution. They were open-minded towards all areas we are trying to look at in the constitution. They were professional in the discussion. They listened and like nationalists, leaders of this nation, they are interested in what will make the nation move forward and were not fixated on any particular thematic area because we led before various thematic areas that we are considering at the moment.”