Hold your LGA chairpersons responsible, let lawmakers focus on legislative duties – Gbajabiamila

Chief of Staff (CoS) to the President, Femi Gbajabiamila, has urged Nigerians to hold their local government chairmen accountable for inadequate social amenities rather than depending on legislators to take such.

Gbajabiamila said this on Monday during a capacity-building retreat for the heads of the House of Representatives’ standing committees.

He claimed that because lawmakers carry out tasks beyond their constitutionally mandated purview, they bear an excessive financial burden.

“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,” he said.

“It has become the legislator’s responsibility to cater to every constituency need, 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 this capacity.

“Yet, political reality requires the legislator to meet these constituency demands by whatever means.”

According to Gbajabiamila, one of the repercussions of the scenario is that politicians, particularly senators and members of the House of Representatives, are “forced to spend more time seeking and pursuing resource opportunities to meet constituency demands.”

Speaking about “this state of affairs” and the actions done to “free our legislators,” the former speaker of the house of representatives remarked that a national dialogue was necessary.

He claimed that even people who “consider themselves well-informed” about politics and government are unaware of the function of the legislature.