Former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, has said the collapse of the local government administration across the country was putting pressure on lawmakers.
Gbajabiamila, Chief of Staff to President Bola Tinubu, stated this in Abuja, at a one-day retreat organised for chairmen and deputy chairmen of standing and special committees in the House of Representatives, yesterday.
The former speaker explained that because of the failure of local government administrations, constituents now look up to their representatives in the parliament to cater for primary health care, basic education, and provide critical social infrastructure among others.
Gbajabiamila, while noting that the aim of oversight by the parliament is to ensure effective use of the government’s resources, charged the House committees to ensure their investigations were carried out in ways that did not suggest abuse of their office power.
He said: “The collapse of local government administrations across the country has created a situation, where constituents look to their legislative representatives to fill the gap and perform municipal functions in their various communities.
“It has become the legislator’s responsibility to cater to every constituency’s needs, from primary healthcare to basic education services, from maintenance of markets to support for rural cooperatives and provision of critical social infrastructure.
“The constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria did not envisage such a role for the legislator and it did not make provisions for the legislator to perform in such capacity. Yet, political reality requires the legislator to meet these constituency demands by whatever means.”
He explained that the development has compelled lawmakers, especially at the federal level, to spend more time seeking and pursuing resource opportunities to meet constituency demands instead of developing the capacities required to be effective as lawmakers.
Consequently, Gbajabiamila said: “We must have a national conversation about this state of affairs. Then, we need to agree on what steps we must take to address this situation, so that we can free our legislators to legislate for the national interest as the constitution intended.”
