A former National Vice Chairman North-west of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Salihu Lukman, has lamented that the current National Assembly is not representing the interests of Nigerians.
Lukman, in a statement issued Tuesday, said part of the challenge of the country’s democracy is that the two chambers of the National Assembly are only accountable to themselves.
He noted that the Public Accounts Committees in both chambers are expected to oversight management of funds allocated to the National Assembly.
The former APC chieftain stressed that somehow, these are issues that contribute to the current reality whereby the National Assembly, its leadership and members lost the moral authority to regulate the conduct of the executive arm of government.
He said with that, they function practically at the mercy of the President and members of the executive arm, almost as if they are employees of the executive.
According to him, Using all these incentives, the President and members of the Executive arm seamlessly turned on the ‘gaslight’, which leaves members with no option but to believe and approve every proposal submitted even when they are injurious to public interests. Having served as the machinery that hurt the people, they become liabilities and therefore eventually got discarded.
Lukman said: “The point is, Nigerian democracy, as it is, is not functionally representing the interest of citizens largely because the parliament represented by the two chambers of the National Assembly – Senate and House of Representatives – have involuntarily submitted themselves to the narcissistic control of the president.
“Until and unless the parliament can free itself from the president, it will almost be impossible for it to develop the capacity of defending and protecting the interests of Nigerians.”