Nigerians do not seem to appreciate the importance of the parliament in a democracy and are therefore not concerned enough to act on their failings. But this is the time for them to rise up and demand performance from their legislators. It is also time to decide whether the resources deployed to maintain the 108 senators and 360 House of Representatives members are commensurate with their output. Can the economy continue to sustain their ostentation?
In Senegal, when it became obvious that a bicameral legislature could no longer be sustained, there was a decision to operate a unicameral legislature. President Macky Sall, on abolition of the Senate in 2012, decided to use the $15 million saved to contain the threats of floods.
There is nothing wrong in facing the reality by pruning the number of the two arms of the National Assembly in Nigeria as a cost-saving measure. Not only that, it also makes sense to reduce the job of the lawmakers into a part-time assignment, where members could only take sitting allowances. There is nothing in what is currently happening at the National Assembly that cannot be handled on a part-time basis.
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