Former Lagos State Governor and leader of Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, has made the call for the upper arm of legislature to scrapped. Tinubu made this known in Abuja on Tuesday
at the 2012 Annual Conference and Awards
ceremony of Leadership Newspapers, where
he stated that the House of Representatives
is better placed at representing the people
since its members are closer to the grass roots. The opposition leader who is a former
Senator, claimed this will go a great deal in
addressing the nation’s huge cost of
governance and recurrent expenditure. “We have kept complaining about the cost of
governance and the recurrent expenditure,
but we have never examined the structural
problem of even the constitution that we are
operating” he stated. “Why do we need two Houses of the National
Assembly, whereas the House of
Representatives representing the smaller
constituencies is enough in the same number
of population. “Why not get rid of the Senate for a slim and
better legislative activity? Let us start
examining that” a fiery Mr Tinubu suggested. Tinubu’s call is coming just as the Senegalese
parliament passed a law, last week to scrap
its Senate and the office of vice-president, as
both are considered too expensive for the
West-African nation’s budget. President Macky Sall last month announced
emergency legislation to scrap the Senate and
turn over its annual budget of almost $16
million to dealing with the impact of deadly
floods that recently inundated the country. Mr Tinubu also expressed his support for
moves by the Chairman of the Independent
National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof.
Attahiru Jega, to take total full control of the
commission by asking that he be allowed to
pick the Resident Electoral Commissioners (REC). Absolute power for Jega The opposition leader stated it was wrong
for the RECs to be appointed by the President,
who he said, belongs to a political party. He noted that it was bad for President
Goodluck Jonathan, who is a member of the
Peoples Democratic Party, a party he said had
vowed that it would rule for 60 years or more,
to be the one appointing the RECs. Since Nigerians had given Prof Jega
permission to act on their behalf, he should be
allowed to pick his lieutenants. “Once you say somebody is Chairman/Chief
Executive of a corporation, you have given him
all the powers and authority to act on behalf
of the people” he stated. “We gave INEC the power and authority to act
on our behalf, to be an institution that will be
transparent and independent and the
commission is being funded directly from
source, from allocation, from tax and
expenditure from our commonwealth and the wealth of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. “Why would we not allow the buck to stop on
the table of INEC Chairman so that if he
messes up, we have somebody to blame. “Why will an INEC chairman not be able to
appoint those in the branches in the states –
the Resident Electoral Commissioners who are
representatives of IEC in the states?”
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