NIGERIA’ S LEGISLATORS AND THEIR IRRESPONSIBILITY IN GOVERNANCE.

It’s time to take a swipe at the National Assembly for once and call them out to their responsibility. The national assembly holds the key to a lot of developmental initiatives that this country needs and without any doubt the success of any executive administration hinges on the National Assembly.

There are policies, legislations such as the PIB, Gender equality Bill, money laundering act, whistle blower act, industrial revolution bill, and so on which the national assembly ought to pass to get us going from where we are to where we want to be as a nation.

I have watched with trepidation how our national assembly has taken almost 100 days to deal with the budget. I have to say that it is a gross show of incompetence, a lack of appreciation of what role they have to play for Nigeria to be great again and pure irresponsibility. I say this for the following reasons:

ONE

The budget is a document that needs to be assessed and all you have to say to each item of the budget is two questions in lay man’s terms:

Is this required? And if it is required, is the cost too high or too low?

There may be all other processes and procedures, but it boils down to these two questions.

I must say I am not impressed. Initially, I was impressed that they could get to problems of padding and etcetera, but right now I have watched with trepidation how they have found it difficult to rectify all the errors and pass the budget to the presidency. It shows that for a long time, the budget was passed on a simple whim of ‘Has he satisfied us?’

It’s the 21^st century, there is a hard copy and a soft copy, and with an excel spreadsheet you’ll be able to edit whatever it is you need to edit within the shortest period of time. But who am I kidding, how many of our senators and house of rep members even know how to use a spreadsheet. Even, without a spreadsheet, they should be done with the document by now.

TWO

The national assembly passed a supplementary budget that will last till today, the 31^st of March 2016. And here we are waiting for the budget that should begin 1^st of April 2016 and there’s no budget to sign in front of the President. Alas, the President even realises there won’t be a budget to sign into law and travels to return on Sunday the 3^rd of April.

Essentially, every Kobo spent by government from the 1^st of April is illegal without a budget passed into law.  A good national assembly will know that the last budget passed will last till 31^st of March and will speed up its machinery to make sure that it sends the budget to the presidency before the 23^rd of March for the presidency to go through and have it signed into law before the 31^st of March.

THREE

The national assembly takes us for a ride as fools and because of the pressure of the press, passes a budget into law without the details and one of them comes out to the press to say, it is a normal process and not a misnomer. I weep for my country Nigeria.

The way it is the executive has 8months to implement a 12month budget and we keep complaining about the level of implementation of our budget. National Assembly! National Assembly! National Assembly! How many times did I call you? A word is enough for the wise.

For pit’s sake, Nigerians the next time you elect senators and representatives, elect the people who can deliver.

Finally, to those who will be there for the next four years or more, stop thinking governance is a joke, stop thinking governance is about your interest, stop thinking that it’s about filling your bellies, deliver to Nigerians, deliver, deliver, deliver and you will get a second term (even though some of you will just try to bribe the people).