Nigeria needs new breed of legislators

NEXT Editorial
April 2, 2011 10:11PM
   

As Nigerians await the legislative election which was postponed on Saturday and is due to take place tomorrow, it is important to remind ourselves of the role of the legislature in the democratic process.

The 1999 Constitution says that “the National Assembly shall have power to make laws for the peace, order and good government of the Federation or any part thereof with respect to any matter included in the Exclusive Legislative List…” Without laws, a democratic society, or any other society for that matter, is doomed. The 17th century English philosopher, Hobbes, reminds us that without laws, there can be no justice, and the only life available to citizens will be a “nasty, brutish, and short” one.

We have in recent weeks been treated to a semblance of activity from our National Assembly– the passing of the Freedom of Information Bill, an Anti-Terrorism Bill, and the National Tobacco Control Bill. We have no idea what spurred this seeming awakening from a legislature that for most of its tenure has made the headlines, not for its accomplishments, but instead for how much it has cost the nation, and how obsessed it has been with self-gratification.

Perhaps the lawmakers realised that time was no longer on their side, and that if they wanted to be judged kindly by posterity then they had to start passing laws, which is what they were elected to do in the first place. If that is the case, then they need to be told that the realisation (of history’s looming judgement) has come a little too late.

If only they had shown a dedication to duty from the beginning. A look at some of the headlines and comments that have accompanied our stories on the National Assembly in the last two years will give a better idea of the kind of legislators Nigeria has been burdened with since 2007 (not that their predecessors were any better):

‘An Assembly for looting’

‘The luxury cars of our lawmakers’; ‘National Assembly, the most expensive on earth’; ‘Our National Assembly is not producing any laws’. In ‘An Assembly for Looting’ (2009), our correspondents wrote: “If the citizens were to dismiss the entire membership of the National Assembly and find other uses for their money, our treasury will have nearly enough money to fund the N88.5billion that President Umaru Yar’Adua plans to spend this year on building power plants, so that children can do home work under electrical lamps and not paraffin.”

With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that the choice Nigeria made was to keep the profligate legislators and instead dismiss our vision of a transformed power situation. Late 2010, the Central Bank Governor disclosed that the National Assembly – made up of less than 500 elected officials– was taking up 25 per cent of “total government overhead.” Even for hardworking legislators, that figure would be unjustifiable.

In June 2009, two years into their tenure, we reported that the Senate had succeeded in passing only 15 of the 284 bills that came before it. At the state level, the situation is not much better. Many State Assemblies are either firmly in the pockets of the state governors, and thus employed for nothing more than rubber-stamping of the governors’ decisions; or embroiled in a cat-and-mouse relationship with the executive. There is the tragicomic case of Ogun State, where the House has been split into two since 2010. We watched as a minority group of nine senators (sympathetic to the governor) met and announced the suspension of 15 members. They then went ahead to elect, from amongst themselves, a new Speaker, who was immediately recognised by the governor.

We hope that the incoming batch of legislators, at federal and state levels, will make a clean break with the past. If the federal legislators want to convince us that they are serious about the wellbeing of our country, they will have to start by doing something about the N63 million (senators) and N45 million (representatives) that they will be ‘entitled to’ per quarter as “constituency allowances”, and for which they do not have to give account.

Legislators have no business awarding contracts and managing project funds. Nigerians also have a duty to hold their legislators accountable. We cannot continue to just complain about dismal performance. Hopefully there will be an election tomorrow and the votes cast will prove to be a just verdict on the performance of the lawmakers. Until politicians get punished – with outright rejection – by the electorate, there will be no incentive for them to shun mediocrity and greed.

http://234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/Home/5687044-146/story.csp

If you are a Nigerian Registered to vote, You now have a few more days to reflect and plan on how you will make an example of these Legislooters.

Even if you are not registered to vote, quickly forgive yourself and start doing what you can to make sure those around you with voters cards use it wisely

Do not waste this chance!! Vote looters out!

Think about your families when you are alone in that secret polling booth.

Punish and remove these Looters and Laggards for the pain they've caused you through their ineptitude and wasteful spending of Public Money;


Bad roads = More accidents

No Electricity = No jobs, No business,

Bad hospitals = Bad health = Death

Bad Schools = Poor Education, No jobs, No money, No progress.

Bad laws = Confusion = Bad enforcement, Police Brutality, No freedom, No Justice, No development.

Bad legislators = More waste, more Ghana-Must-Go bags of cash, No one to challenge The president and the executive <---- Bad News

Vote Them Out!! they are not more Nigerian than you and your family.

Thank you folks!

Prepare to vote them out folks. One week to go.

^^^^
Just keep punishing the bad one's Chikena!

Looters love money, no one likes to get fired, they will be forced to perform better if they see that people are ready to punish them for bad service.

I doubt if we have many saints in politics in any country anywhere, sensible societies make them work by holding them accountable, do the same, VOTE LOOTERS OUT!

Wake your people up early! Get ready to vote looters out.