A document on Nairaland with a caption, “A Bill for an Act to Substitute the Annexure to Decree 24 of 1999 with a New Governance Model for the Federal Republic of Nigeria.” published on May 31, 2024 has been shared across the digital media space and has stirred a lot of attention by netizens, making the claim worth verifying.
The alleged draft bill claims that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu submitted the legislative proposal to the National Assembly in a bid to return Nigeria to a regional government.
Verification
Halt Fake decided to search for documents and other forms of data to confirm or disqualify the claim, however, the findings show that;
First, the House of Representatives disowned the trending draft ‘bill’ for discussion, seeking a return to the regional system of government in different platforms.
Still dissociating from the bill, the Chairman, House Committee on Rules and Business, Francis Waive, while speaking to Punch Newspapers, confirmed that the said bill was not before the committee.
The verification at this point showed that the information was false, but then Halt Fake decided to probe further to unravel the origin of the claim and the reason behind it.
Origin Of Claim
The document is reportedly a draft by one ‘Dr Akin Fapohunda’, who is neither a lawmaker in the Senate or the House of Representatives but a retired federal permanent secretary and prominent chieftain of the Afenifere, the Yoruba political and socio-cultural group.
Dr Fapohunda, an advocate for the restructuring and new model of government in Nigeria, in an interview with Arise Tv (and other media like Channels Tv and podcasts) said the propositions of his draft would help to resolve some of Nigeria’s crises if passed into law.
Conclusion
From the position of the Nigerian lawmakers and documents reviewed by haltfake.com, it can be concluded that the speculations that President Bola Tinubu has forwarded a bill to the National Assembly to return the country to regional government is not only false, but misleading.
