... ( Cont'd) The same people who can stop the madness are the beneficiaries. It is this anomaly that makes the constitution governing Nigerian politics a very unfortunate oxymoron.
How can the same people that can sanitise the National Assembly be the same individuals who are there to recoup campaign costs and also “hammer”(make more money)?
How did we get to this point?
Why are nomination forms for political positions unduly expensive? Why has no one tried to ever challenge the legitimacy of this madness?
Imagine the presidential nomination form going as high as 40million naira for the major political parties? Why should it be so?
The simple consequence of this nonsense is two fold:
1. It automatically rules out people who are not thieves or rich from aspiring for public positions.
2. It makes those who aspire to eventually win and chase how to recoup their money and even steal/make more.
And this particular problem is the reason why our elected officials across the different positions including those going into the all-important National Assembly ONLY get elected and first think of getting back the monies they spent to get in.
That’s a very unfortunate reality. For the average Nigerian, when we think of thieving politicians, we only think in terms of the Executive- like the President or Governors.
But we forget one simple fact-
The only reason the Executive engages in stealing & lawlessness is because the legislature is incompetent.
So, the only reason the members of the Executive can steal without caution is because the National Assembly has failed at its duty of curtailing executive madness and the lawmakers are themselves busy occupied with stealing their own portion of the proverbial National Cake.
So if you have a Governor who steals a state dry, it is either because the House of Assembly is practically in his pocket doing his bidding, or because the lawmakers are themselves corrupt thieves who have absolutely no moral confidence to probe and investigate the executive.
And that’s why I’m of the deep conviction that the ONLY way to truly fix the country and its problem of incompetent governance is to fix the National Assembly.
However, if you get the right people into the Legislature, they will curb the excesses of the Executive and ensure competence. So essentially, the power lies with you, the power lies with me.
The power starts when YOU carefully choose that person who represents your senatorial district at the Federal Capital and who stands for you at the State House of Assembly.
That’s the simple way to fix the country.
Finally, we all somehow don’t bother about the kinds of characters who end up in the National Assembly and State Houses of Assembly, then we start to lament when the Executive continues or begins a tenure of perpetual incompetence, uncontrolled nepotism and blatant corruption.
Who were you thinking can stop the Executive from running mad?
Is it not the lawmakers?
But when we get carried away and only bother mostly with the Executive and pay no attention to the quality of people who fill the Houses of Assembly, then executive madness reigns supreme.
So ladies and gentlemen, it is not an easy task, but it is an easier, more realistic and more achievable task to put sensible people in the National Assembly (who will put the Executive on their toes), than to hope for an imaginary messiah with a magic wand
to sort all our pain.
That will almost NEVER happen. There’s no political messiah anywhere.
It is a lazy fanciful idea sold to politically naive infants who think the problem or solution to a country’s problems only require a political genie to occupy an Executive position.
Even IF theoretically, you do get a “good person” as President, AS LONG AS you have a compromised corrupt legislature, the fact is no actual work will ever be accomplished.
The answer lies in fixing the Legislature who can then ensure competence across all levels of government.
No comments:
Post a Comment