We Don’t Need to Have Two Chambers – Shekarau
The senator representing Kano Central, Ibrahim Shekarau, has advised President Bola Tinubu to cut down the number of federal lawmakers to reduce the high cost of governance.
He stated this during an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Wednesday.
The former Kano State governor said, “Left to me, we don’t need to have the two chambers, the two houses,” he said “It’s costing the country. I agree, a democracy means getting as many involved as possible, but the way it is going on now, it’s almost 500 legislators nationwide; I don’t think we need this much at the moment.”
Shekarau raised doubt over Tinubu’s political will and said, “I wonder if he’ll have the courage to do all the constitutional amendments and go through the process, and reduce all of this.”
He added that by reducing the number of parastatals, the workload at the centre will be less.
“Then you’ll discover that the legislative arm will also have to be [downsized] because if there isn’t much to do at the centre, you don’t need all of this sea of hundreds of people really to do oversight assignments,” he said.
“I have been subscribing to the idea of devolution of powers. The Federal Government should cut its costs by devolving a lot of these responsibilities down the line, to the states and the local governments.”
He claims that the Federal Government has established “so many” agencies and parastatals and spends “so much” money at the centre.
“Unfortunately, we’ve not had leadership that has the courage. There was the Oronsaye report during Jonathan’s time, which has yet to be implemented,” he added
“[Former President Goodluck] Jonathan did not implement it; [former President Muhammadu] Buhari did not implement it.
“The moment you create a parastatal, you’re already talking of board members, chief executive, directors, departments, and the overhead cost of running all these agencies add quite a lot to the expenses of running the government.”
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The National Assembly is made up of 109 senators and 360 House of Representatives members. What is your thought on Shekarau’s appeal to President Tinubu?
