My Message To the National Dialogue Committee

The president in his independence day speech took many of us by surprise as he disclosed his intention to constitute what he called ‘The advisory committee on National Dialogue’, to chart a way forward for the country. A week after his speech, he followed it with action in which he inaugurated the committee. Immediately after their inauguration, the committee started working without much waste of time giving that they were giving a time frame of just six weeks. The committee has since then started going round the six geo-political zones in the country with the aim of consulting the stake holders and other interesting groups in those zones.

In the process, the committee had also started receiving views from individuals and or group of people all over the nation. Now, as an individual I here by wishes to send in my little input which I thought deserves your recognition. It is about the Federal Legislature of our dear country, NIGERIA.

I have since joined many others in the country in proposing for a uni-cameral Federal Legislature. Not only that the current bi-cameral legislature is expensive but also it is a sort of duplication of work. I believe it is too expensive and that they are costing the nation too much to maintain them.

I’m proposing that:

• Both the senate and house of representatives shall be abolish and that only one house shall emerge. This house shall be called ‘National assembly’.
• Each member of the national assembly shall represent two (2) local government areas very close to each other in the same state and that states with odd number of local governments shall have a single National assembly member to represent three (3) local governments.
• The National assembly members shall be seating twice a week -on Monday and Thursday- only but with the exception of emergency sittings as the condition may warrants.
• Each National assembly member must have an office in both the local governments of his constituency into which he/she must be in either of them unfailingly during the working days of which there is no National sittings.

It is my believe  that this will help our democracy because most of these law makers had since lost contact with their constituencies. This has been their culture since 1999 and I don’t think they are ready to change.

Mustapha Saddiq wrote from Batagarawa, katsina state.
Email: mustyfantastic77@yahoo.com
Twitter: @mustysaddiq