My good friend, Omoyele Sowore, says he will scrap the Senate if he is elected president in 2019. Some Nigerians say the president has no power to do such a thing and that it would be dictatorial and unconstitutional. I agree, but with a caveat.
Obviously, Sowore is not suggesting that he would issue a decree to abolish the senate. Rather, taken in context, Sowore is advancing a provocative prescription to call attention to the unsustainably expensive presidential democracy we practice. In the same interview, he made this broader point about the price tag of the presidential system of bi-cameral legislature we copied uncritically from the Americans. He said the FG currently spends a whopping 1 trillion Naira annually to maintain the upper legislative chamber, an amount that could transform our agricultural and educational sectors. He then expressed the need to adopt a unicameral legislative system.
Sowore is not the first person to make this point. In 2008, I published an essay arguing that we should rethink the very foundation of this democracy we practice because it is too expensive, over-centralized, and thus ironically anti-development. Democracy is supposed to foster development; at least that's what we were told during the pro-democracy struggle in the 1990s. Alas, our democracy is a recipe for retrogression. I contended rather melodramaticall
y that if we do not kill this democracy, it will kill us. I stand by that argument. I argued in that essay for a unicameral legislative system or a modified unicameral system.
It is not the only tweak we need, of course. Serious, far-reaching decentralization is a critical component of the change we need, and that is what Sowore failed to mention in his interview. Decentralization and localized governance in turn are the essence of the call for restructuring. You cannot have decentralization and a unicameral legislature without a new constitution. The senate is codified in the current constitution. The senate of course will not commit political suicide and amend the constitution to get rid of itself. There is thus an impasse, a conundrum.
If the existing democratic institution cannot reform itself to inaugurate a new era of cheaper, leaner, decentralized, sustainable, and development-friendly democracy, we need the reformist initiative to come from outside it. They say referendum is unconstitutional or extra-constitutional, so what real tools do we have to change the system then? Mention a constitutional conference or a national conference and they'll also tell you that it would be legitimacy-chal
lenged as long as there is an elected legislative body in existence. The kind of change Nigeria needs is not possible under the current constitutional and democratic arrangement. We're thus in a constitutional and democratic trap/prison of our own making.
So, while I agree theoretically with Sowore's critics, I also sympathize with his point as it is borne out of frustration with a system that cannot reform itself and is designed to prevent the kind of far-reaching constitutional and structural reforms we need.
-Prof Moses Ochonu

never. na person get town when herbalist take go consult for people. d manhood of old man can not be a playing thing for a crying child. make he think of smtin else.....

We are really "imprisoned" by this constitution. What then is the way forward, if restructuring seems a bit far fetched? Since a new government will want to behave like the present one. We are really trapped.

The allowances collected by 109 senators in one month (#13,500,000.00 * 109) can pay 29,430 people #50,000.00 for one month. We have not gone to allowances they get to execute constituency projects.

Mumu post. Do you think the most benefactors of the national assembly will allow that to work.
The North still control 80% of Nigeria resources , do you think they we be happy for that happen ?
Have you forgotten that the stupid Nigeria constitution is designed to favor the core North.
When people are asking how he intend to achieve it do you think they are fool.
Man Nigeria don't need any uni-camera legislature , all we want is total restructuring. Let all tribe's in Nigeria come together and fashion out our grievance or better still everybody should go her separate way .