Speaker, Osun State House of Assembly, Najeem Salaam, has urged the electorate to be magnanimous to the legislators by re-electing them back for a long time, for the sake of cutting cost.
He was speaking at a closing segment of the Legislative Retreat of Kwara State House of Assembly in Ede, State of Osun.
His words: “If we have our lawmakers re-elected time and time over again, the cost of training new lawmakers would be saved, and the system would be better for it, because of the experience that would have been acquired along the line, but if we keep on changing the lawmakers, then we have to keep on training at expensive rate.”
He also appealed to President Muhammadu Buhari to assent the constitutional amendment that accommodates autonomy of state Houses of Assembly.
Salaam stressed that, for the training and special skill acquisition on legislative matter to attain level of practicality, the autonomy must be obtained.
“If a state parliament is self accounting, the chances are high that checks and balance contemplated by the framers of the constitutional democracy would be attained, but if a parliament would rely on executive for funding, then we should know that independence is redefined,” he said.
Salaam then expressed his optimism on the preparedness of state legislatures across the federating units of the country; saying over two third majority of state assemblies endorsed the autonomy at the last constitutional amendment.
Salaam further pleaded with lawmakers of the state Houses of Assembly to halt the habitual haste of changing leadership of the parliament, saying that roving impeachment of Speakers had made assemblies unstable to the advantage of the executive.
According to him, “Another sore point in the weakness of legislature is incessant changing of leadership and until we halt the trend, the executive would continue to take the advantage of the situation, and we would not blame it for supporting a trend that keeps its interest, because this is politics.”
