Speaker of the Oyo State House of Assembly, Barr. Adesina Michael Adeyemo has expressed his displeasure over the activities of federal lawmakers in Nigeria, describing the Nation’s assembly as a relaxation centre.
Adeyemo, who was reacting to what he called needless face-off between the executive and The Senate especially on a television programme monitored in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, blamed Nigerians for not taking legislative elections serious.
According to the two-term lawmaker, the national assembly is populated by people who do not have the interest of the country at heart, adding that it is time they party waded in.
Hear him: “Why do we have this face-off? You have to start from the characters we have in the national and state assemblies. Do the electorates understand the kind of persons they should vote for or they are just voting for voting sake? If you must gamble with any election, it must not be with that of the legislative arm of government because the people you are electing must have integrity, character, experience and maturity to do the work. You are having a gathering of people whose antecedent, attitude, sentiment, perception and orientation are not the same, coming together. For every issue, you will have diverse opinion. You see different attitude and at the end of the day, for anybody to manage those characters, we need a serious consideration of those people there.”
He added that “over the years, if you look at the people going to represent us at The Senate, you will probably see serving governors who have spent the normal eight years in office in their respective states and feel that they just have to be in government at all cost and the only place they can go is The Senate. The people you have at the national assembly are so comfortable because they have been in government for quite a long period of time. They have the resources. It has become a relaxation centre for them. And with that, you cannot expect much. The Nigerian issue doesn’t agitate their minds. What do you think they are looking for anymore? They have everything. And therefore, you cannot expect commitment from them. You cannot get the statemanship from them because these people are too comfortable.”
He, however, said that the legislative arms of government has suffered enough due to intermittent military incursion and that the arm is just enjoying uninterrupted reign in this Fourth Republic.
“We must be mindful that out of the arms of government, it is only the legislative arm that has not enjoyed a smooth ride for a long time. Whenever there is military incursion into our politics, the legislative arm of government will be scrapped. So the legislative arm has suffered that setback for a long period of time. So, it is just beginning to come up. All what we are saying now are expected,” he explained.
