At a summit on Nigeria's out-of-school crisis organized by the UK charity, IA-Foundation, in Lagos over the weekend, Falana made the request in a speech he read.
The outspoken campaigner said that access to basic education in Nigeria was being hampered by state governments' failure to make matching contributions to the country's Universal Basic Education Fund.
According to a UNESCO estimate from 2022, Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, has almost 20 million children who are not enrolled in school.
In his speech, which was made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Sunday, Falana emphasized the urgency of the National Assembly acting quickly and bemoaned the alarmingly high number of out-of-school children in the nation.
He claimed that in order to comply with Section 2 of the Compulsory Free Universal Basic Education Act, the state governments needed to stop ignoring it and start making matching contributions to the Universal Basic Education Fund.
The activist stated that the National Assembly should see to it that the constitution is amended to provide the federation's accountant-general the authority to take from sources the counterpart funds owed by each state government.
"Mr. Hamid Bobboyi, the Executive Secretary of the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), lamented the state governments' failure to contribute matching financing and make use of the yearly matching grants provided by the commission to strengthen their basic education systems in June of last year.
"The panel was particularly concerned that in 2021, the states did not use roughly N110 billion of the intervention funds they had acquired from UBEC, leaving the money in the State Universal Basic Education Boards' (SUBEBs) coffers.
"Sometime in 2017, we discovered that the federal government had agreed to reimburse state governments for all money that had already been taken out of their coffers to fulfill the demands of the London Paris Club.
"We were successful in persuading the federal government to deduct the corresponding sum that the state governments had neglected to add to the Universal Basic Education sum.
"The recommendation was approved by the Federal Government, and in that way, N71.3 billion was taken out of the source and deposited into UBEC's account.
The states then got a total of N142.6 billion for the provision of necessary amenities in public primary and junior secondary schools across the nation after UBEC added the matching payment of N71.3 billion.
In accordance with Section 2 of the Compulsory Free Universal Basic Education Act, the National Assembly should address state governments' refusal to make a matching contribution to the Universal Basic Education Fund.
He asserts that the National Assembly must immediately ensure that the constitution is amended to provide the accountant-general of the federation the authority to deduct the counterpart amount that each state government owes from sources.
Falana continued by saying that now that all 36 of the states in the federation had ratified the Child's Rights Act and passed a child rights law, it was the joint obligation of the federal, state, and local governments to make sure that every Nigerian child had access to free and compulsory education.
The Discrimination Against Persons With Disabilities (Prohibition) Act, 2019, he said, ensured that any person with a disability could get free education up to the senior secondary level.
In the same vein, all public schools, whether elementary, secondary, or tertiary, must have at least one staff member who has been trained to support the educational development of people with disabilities or special facilities for the successful education of people with disabilities.
Because the political class, made up of representatives from all registered political parties, has not shown any commitment to ensuring that every child in Nigeria receives a quality education, these laws have been violated.
"The members of the legislative and executive branches of government have failed to recognize the threat posed by the highest number of children out of school in the world—18.5 million.
Falana said that adding stricter requirements to the Compulsory Free Universal Basic Education Act won't help in a place where there is a lot of poverty.