Senate President Ahmad Lawan has discredited the public perception of the Ninth National Assembly as a rubber stamp of the executive.
Lawan said this at the Conference of Distinguished Parliamentarians in Abuja on Monday.
He spoke at a conference called “The Legislature, the Legislative Mandate, and the People: Reality and Public Perception,” organized by the National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies (NILDS).
According to him, Nigeria has three arms of government that are constitutionally equal, but the people are more represented in the legislature than the other arms.
He said that for the peace and development of the nation, the three arms of the government must work together, as the failure and success of one arm of the government will be attributed to all.
According to him, “the legislative branch, being constitutionally the first arm of the government, the closest and also the most accessible to the people, easily lends itself to public scrutiny and, on occasions, assumes the blame even for governmental decisions that are left out of control. its legislative competence. “
He explained that “the three arms of government have a responsibility to each other and an obligation to Nigerians, so they must have a cordial relationship based on mutual respect for constitutional rights and the mandate to succeed.”
He said that the Ninth Assembly’s cooperation with the executive had improved efficiency in law-making; “As of November 2021, around 2,500 bills have been introduced; 769 in the Senate and 1,634 in the House of Representatives ”.
He said that the number of laws published increased compared to the different regimes since 1999; Olusegun Obasanjo (1999-2006) 82 Acts; Umar Musa Yar’Adua (2007¬-2009) 38 acts; Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (2010-2015) 40 acts and Muhammdu Buhari (2015-date) 84 acts.
Lawan said that the salaries of the members of the National Assembly were approved by the Fiscal, Allocation and Revenue Mobilization Commission (RMAFC), which is included in the budget allocated to the National Assembly.
The total salary for a senator is approximately 1.5 million naira and 1.3 million naira for a member of the House of Representatives.
The average cost of running an office for a senator and a member of the House of Representatives is 13 million naira and 8 million naira, respectively.
He noted that the National Assembly’s budgets since 1999 “have never exceeded 150 billion naira, which represents about 3% of the annual budget.”
On the issue of constituency projects and zonal intervention projects, he stated that the system allows legislators to nominate projects for implementation in their constituencies but they do not implement them.
“In accordance with their legislative mandate, they oversee the process. Corruption in Nigeria is a complex issue.
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“Although corruption in any arm of the government is not acceptable and should be condemned, however, pointing to a single arm of the government without any solid evidence is to undermine the authority of that institution.
“The purchase of operational vehicles for members of the National Assembly has received a lot of media attention,” Lawan noted.
He said that if civil servants with the rank of deputy director and above are entitled to official vehicles and some ministers have a convoy of cars, he does not see why assigning a Toyota camry and a Land Cruiser to members would be such a gruesome proposition. .
He said the main factor contributing to the negative perception of the legislature was political apathy, “arising from the school of thought that politics is ‘dirty game’ and politicians are ‘dirty’.”
He said the Ninth Assembly “will continue to improve public perception of the legislature.”
(YAYA)