By Demola Akinyemi

ILORIN-DEPUTY Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon Lasun Yussuff, has identified the legislature as the most vilified arm of government on account of its closeness to the citizenry.

Yussuff, who also absolved the National Assembly of graft allegations during the consideration of the 2016 budget, spoke at the 17th  Media Parliament of the Kwara State chapter of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, NUJ, in Ilorin, the Kwara State Capital. It was themed: “Challenges of Lawmaking and the Delivery of Dividends of Democracy.”

The lawmaker said many Nigerians are ill-informed about governance and how the legislature work hence the tongue-lashing of legislators over issues.

Bemoaning recurring executive – legislative spat, he lamented that the media was most times too hasty in passing the buck without being armed with relevant facts on the workings of the legislature.

His words: “While the executive makes proposals on projects, programmes and expenditure for every year, the legislature approves figures that are spent. In the process, the legislature often interface with the executive to have certain projects and programmes form part of the budget.

“And because of the closeness of legislators to the constituents, it is critical that certain pressing areas requiring government attention are suggested and included in the estimates. Unfortunately, the poor understanding of the fine details of legislative practice anchored on the express provision of the constitution erroneously informed the so called “budget padding debacle,” which was a distraction to the polity. An instance is the case of 50-year old Ojutu Bridge in my constituency that has great potentials in turning around the lives of my constituents.

RT Hon. Lasun Yussuff

“The argument of lawmakers that as the true representatives of the people, who are close to the grassroots, they know the needs and therefore are better placed to determine the projects that are relevant to their constituencies remains as relevant as ever… because we are the ones that allocate the resources, we can thus exercise some reasonable influence in ensuring that there is value for money allocated. At the end of the day, the ultimate responsibility for execution of developmental projects or amenity or service of any type rests squarely on the executive, which has the enabling capacity to do so. Part of the challenges we face is the unwillingness on the part of the Executive in some instances to take the legislature into confidence. Even after we had influenced the siting of projects in our respective constituencies, such projects had often suffered from poor implementation or non-implementation due to the uncooperative attitude of government officials, who hide under the mantra of funds insufficiency…

“One major challenge the legislature has faced in Nigeria over time is distorted public perception of the lawmakers in the media. Through the actions of some sections of the media, National Assembly members are falsely projected as a selfish bunch that feeds fat on our common patrimony and cannot provide democracy dividends to the masses they represent. Nothing can be further from the truth!

“The legislature and indeed the National Assembly is a very patriotic arm of government and has remained true in its commitment to the wishes and aspiration of the Nigerian people. This is reflected in the various interventions we have continued to make through the instrumentality of representation and appropriation to improve the lives of our constituents, sometimes not appreciated as dividends of democracy.

“We are the most criticized arm of government because we are the ones that are nearer to the people. Our electorate find little or no difficulty in accessing us at any time. We listen to their complaints and misgivings about the system and we try to collate and arrange these grievances as the feedback in the process. The softer side will include bringing the challenges and matters of interest of our constituents to the parliament for intervention…

“I want to use this forum to appeal to our friends in the media to be factual and more objective in the coverage of the activities of the Nigerian Legislature, particularly the National Assembly. No useful national purpose will ever be served if our media continue to project the National Assembly in bad light. More so, the legislature is the “youngest” of the three arms of government because from 1960 until 1999, anytime the military intervened in the polity of the nation, it is always the legislature that suffered most. It is suspended only to be revived when a civil regime is put in place. Both the executive and judicial arms have been intact throughout the period of independence”.

In his welcome remark, the Chairman, Kwara State council of NUJ, Mallam Abiodun Abdulkareem, said the media has a crucial role to play in holding the legislature accountable to the people, pointing out that it remains the first arm of government.