Nigerians Make Unfair Demands on Lawmakers – Senate President

The Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, says of the three arms of government, legislators are the most misunderstood and attacked by Nigerians.

According to him, Nigerians blame lawmakers for everything, including things not directly under their control.

The Senate President, represented by the senator representing Ogun Central, Shuaib Salisu, said this on Sunday at the 100th birthday colloquium of a Second Republic lawmaker, Senator Kunle Oyero, organised by the Abeokuta Grammar School Old Boys Association in Abeokuta, Ogun State.

Akpabio said, “The one arm of government that people don’t really understand and is always a subject of ridicule and attack is the legislature. In fact, people sometimes don’t think legislators do anything at all.

“The problem is that the metric of measuring the performance of the legislators by the electorate is different from what is contained in the syllabus. The syllabus will say as a legislator your role is to make laws, perform oversight functions and make appropriations; those are the three things a legislator must perform.

“But any senator that confines himself to that will not get a return ticket even in his party because the metric of measuring the performance of legislators is the number of transformers, and other material things they give to the people they are representing.”

However, the Global President of AGSOBA, Sunday Oduntan, advocated that lawmakers should work part-time.

“Nobody should be blamed for anything. Our major problem is the structure and the way we do things. There is one thing to have good laws, another thing is to implement the law and I think that is where the problem is. The political terrain could be a lot better,” he added.