Nubian Rights Forum & 2 others v Attorney General & 6 others; Child Welfare Society & 9 others (Interested Parties) [2020] eKLR 642. The 2nd Petitioner contends that embedding the impugned amendments in an omnibus Bill containing amendments of 67 other statutes unnecessarily rushed their passage with the obvious consequence that the public and Parliament itself were deprived of the opportunity to exhaustively debate the reasonableness and necessity of the amendments relative to their stated objective. Further, that if the proceedings of the relevant Departmental Committee and the Whole House are anything to go by, it is ex facie evident that in spite of their apparent implications on fundamental rights and freedoms and particularly the right to privacy, the full import of the amendments was not at all debated and the logical inference from this is that either the legislators did not appreciate the extensive consequences of the amendments or they had no reasonable opportunity to debate them, as they would have done, had the impugned amendments been presented as a stand-alone Bill. In the 2nd Petitioner’s view, the enactment of the impugned amendments amounted to abuse of legislative discretion and a breach of public trust. 643. The 3rd Petitioner joined the 1st and 2nd Petitioners in faulting the National Assembly for using an omnibus Bill to pass the impugned amendments. It is the 3rd Petitioner’s submission that statutory amendments by way of statute law miscellaneous legislation should strictly be confined to cases of minor non-controversial amendments as was held in the 2019 Law Society Case. Its view is that the impugned amendments breached the said legal principle in that the amendments were substantial and should not have been introduced through a Miscellaneous Amendment Act. 644. The 5th Interested Party also agrees with the position taken by the Petitioners and the authorities relied on in support of the contention that omnibus amendments in the form of Statute Law Miscellaneous legislation ought to be confined only to minor non-controversial and generally house-keeping amendments. It further cites the case of Okiya Omtatah v The Communication Authority of Kenya & 21 others [2017] eKLR for the proposition that an omnibus Bill is designed to make only relatively minor, non-controversial amendments to various Acts and to repeal Acts that are no longer required and assist in expediting the government’s legislative programme and Parliamentary business by reducing the number of separate amendment Bills that deal with relatively minor amendments and repeals. Further, that an amendment that has an impact on either the letter or the spirit of the Constitution, however remotely, cannot be termed a minor, non-controversial house-keeping amendments. The 5th Interested Party therefore submits that NIIMS squarely falls outside the confines of the province of ‘minor noncontroversial and generally house-keeping amendments’ and ought not to have been passed as a miscellaneous amendment. 645. The 5th Interested Party identifies the large amount of public funds spent in the creation of NIIMS as another facet of the defects in the procedure used in the enactment of the legislation establishing it. It also relies on the 2016 Law Society Case in which the Court relied on the Canadian Miscellaneous Statute Law Amendment Program to hold that for a Bill to qualify as non-controversial, it should not involve the spending of public funds, prejudicially affect the rights of persons, or create new offences or subject a new class of persons to an existing offence. It is the 5th Interested Party’s case that the Respondents are on record as admitting expenditure of public funds on the project. It submits that for the above reasons, it was improper to introduce NIIMS through a Statute Law (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill. The 5th Interested Party therefore asks the court to find that the amendments were unlawful and unconstitutional. 646. The 6th Interested Party agrees with the Petitioners on the unconstitutionality of the impugned amendments. It asserts that the very use of an omnibus Statute Law Miscellaneous Amendment Act betrayed the mischief on the part of the Respondents, which was to defeat the public’s right and interest to examine the legislation and participate in public affairs and governance. In its view, the object and scope of a Statute Law Miscellaneous Amendment Act is to correct anomalies, inconsistencies, outdated terminology or errors, which are minor, noncontroversial amendments to a number of statutes using a single Bill. 647. According to the 6th Interested Party, the impugned amendments were prima facie not minor or non- http://www.kenyalaw.org - Page 102/174