SENATE LEGISLATION MUST GIVE WAY TO PARLIAMENTARY GOVERNANCE IN 2023!

ZION B-BC   NEWSLETTER.  

(Looking at Nigeria's Political System From a Godly Perspective).

A Publication of the Zion Faith Bible-Believing Church Kpeyegyi Abuja Nigeria {Vol. 8.NO 305. 15th June, 2019.} “…ONLY The Truth, Will Set You   Free! (John.8:32).

SENATE LEGISLATION MUST GIVE WAY TO PARLIAMENTARY GOVERNANCE IN 2023!

The clamour for a return to the Parliamentary System of government by Nigerians at home and the Diaspora, has reached its crescendo and the newly sworn-in legislators - especially in the House of Representatives - should urgently take over this advocacy from the 71 members of the 8th Green Chambers, who could not complete the national assignment before the end of their tenure! REFERENDUM?

In December, 2018, those patriotic legislators, with one voice and in one accord, called for the re-introduction of parliamentary legislature in view of the discrepancies between the poor and the very rich politicians who pretend to represent the downtrodden in Nigeria. They argued that Nigeria could not have been rated as the POVERTY CAPITAL of the world if wastages were not entertained in governance!
Before these honourable gentlemen embarked on this noble mission, We of the Editorial Board of the  Zion B-BC Newsletter had canvassed for the same CHANGE, in some of our past editions and  encouraged the Buhari Administration to moot an Executive Bill for scrapping of the SENATE and divert all appropriations which would have otherwise accrued to the "distinguished Senators", to social intervention programmes in agriculture, education, health, job creation! etc.Check: "Go to the Ants & 74 legislators are sufficient. ....
Those 71 daring legislators, who moved against the several years of STATUS QUO of sharing illicit monies through dubious salaries, allowances, and annual budget paddings, rose in unison to debate the Bill and to amend the1999 Constitution of Nigeria to that effect. The Bill passed through First Reading and the 9th NASS legislators were urged to continue from where they stopped!

GAINS OF A PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT.
First, it is not complicated; second, it is cost-effective; third, it bonds the government and its subjects for faster political, social and economic developments; fourth, it does not allow for incompetence among the executive and the legislature! A parliamentary system or parliamentary democracy is a system of democratic governance of a State where the executive derives its democratic legitimacy from its ability to command the confidence of the legislature. Under a parliamentary system of government, members of the Cabinet or the Executive Council are also members of the legislative arm of government who normally formed a unicameral parliament, having won elections in their various constituencies.

The Head of a parliamentary government who is addressed as Prime Minister, (Head of Government), must enjoy the confidence of his colleagues, to remain in authority and also consult with the Head of State, who is a ceremonial head. The British House of Commons which is perhaps the oldest parliamentary democracy in the world, serves as a case study in view of the trending challenges of BREXIT REFERENDUM of 23rd June, 2016.
Conservative Prime Minister, David Cameron honourably resigned for failing to stop United Kingdom (UK), from exiting after 43 years of membership and now his successor, Mrs. Theresa May, is on her way out also, without achieving her ambition to take the UK out of the European Union (EU), because she was unable to convince her colleagues with neither fool-proof nor superior arguments!
In a parliamentary system of government, the role of the Head of State, though ceremonial, is not completely redundant because he must always be consulted according to constitution, to assent to bills of parliament into law and call on elected prime ministers to form new governments as at when due.

9TH SENATE MUST PUT NATIONAL INTEREST ABOVE EGOTISM AND SUPPORT THE BILL!
As the new House of Representatives members resuscitate the debate on re-introduction of Parliamentary system, Senators should not stand aloof but create a committee to work with the lower house to ensure a quick passage of bill with their concurrence and thereby WRITE THEIR NAMES IN LETTERS OF GOLD for posterity to judge them as true representatives of the talakawas!
Delegates to the 2014 National Conference, recommended a return to parliamentary system of government; and now socio-cultural groups, consisting of Afenifere, Ohaneze N'digbo, prominent Nigerians and politicians, have all backed the move by the 71 legislators because of the general consensus that the Presidential system has turned out to be the albatross of the Nigerian economy!
The ball is squarely in the court of the House of Representative legislators who must realise that a unicameral legislature is the best option for the nation to surmount challenges of unemployment, human development opportunities as more funds would be made available to cater for the Labour Sector of the economy!
They should also be ready to make sacrifices as the 360-strong membership figure will also be pruned to 74 legislators who will be assisted by a professional secretariat and work on part-time! In this 21st century age of computer science and hi-tech information/communication facilities, what excuses would any developing economy give for being saddled with 469 law makers who were virtually interested in eating the "national cake", without contributing time and resources to grow the economy!

THE SENATE HAD OVERSTAYED ITS WELCOME - LET'S EASE IT OUT!
Patriotic Nigerians are fed up with the Presidential system of government which favours squadermania and wastages! They are also tired of the desperation of money-bag politicians who have invaded and turned the hallowed chambers of the National Assembly (NASS), into a den of robbers, where illicit deals unknown to good governance were hatched and executed with impunity for only 469 persons out of about 200 million citizens, to continue a life of opulence at the expense of the TALKAWAS - the poor masses!
Why was their so much frenzy, hustle and bustle, so much horsetrading and desperation at the just concluded inauguration of the 9th NASS, on Tuesday, 11th June, 2019, for principal offices by ranking officers of the ruling and opposition parties, for transient positions of life and the ephemeral gains of money? It has been established that Nigeria Legislators are the highest paid politicians in the world! Senators of the Federal Republic of Nigeria have not denied that they earn more money than their United States counterparts and even the Presidents of their country and that of America!

The year 2009 statistics of federal legislators emoluments revealed that they were the highest paid public servants in the world because a total of N102.8 billion, (5% of the country’s annual budget), comprising of N11.8billion as salaries and N90.96billion as allowances, was spent on 469 Nigerians; 109 Senators and 360 House of Representatives members! The largesse incredibly increased to N 150 billion naira from 2011 to date and those legislators continued to smile to the bank at the expense of the poor masses!

In the United States of America (USA), where minimum wage was USD$1.257, (N191.667), a US law maker earned USD$15,080 (N2.3million), per month while his Nigerian senator counterpart earned N29.472.749.00million totalling an annual haul of N182million, in a country where minimum wage is a paltry N18.000 and which many State Governments still owed up to seven months payment of arrears to workers!

It was revealed that Nigerian Senators got more money from their numerous allowances than from their annual basic salaries.
The allowances include but not limited to the following: Hardship allowance, 50% of basic salary, (BS); Constituency, 200% of BS; Furniture, 300% of BS; Newspapers, 50% of BS; Wardrobe, 25% of BS; Recess, 10% of BS; Accommodation, 200% of BS; Utilities, 30% of BS; Domestic Staff, 35% of BS; Entertainment, 30% of BS; Personal Assistant, 25% of BS; Vehicle maintenance, 75% of BS; Leave allowance, 10% of BS; Severance Gratuity, 300% of BS; paid once in four years and, Motor Vehicle allowance, 400% of BS, also paid once in four years! 

The 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, bequeathed to the nation by the Military, is full of several flaws which give room to clever politicians to manipulate wealth to themselves and further impoverish the citizens instead of improving their lots!
Of the Three Arms of government, the Legislature is the citadel of greedy politicians who claim to represent the masses and who claim outrageous salaries and allowances they are illicit because those monies were neither processed nor appropriated by the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), the body that is constitutionally set up to fix salaries and allowances of all public officers, at the Federal and States levels! These politicians capitalize on Chapter V Section 80 (2) (3); 81(1) (2) (4) (a) (b); 82; 83 (1) (2) of the said faulty Constitution, which saddles them with oversight functions, including, scrutiny of the annual budgets which the document mandates the Executive to prepare and execute judiciously to ensure consistent economic growth! The RMAFC official salaries and allowances for legislators is less than TWO million naira per month, but these legislators appropriate a whooping N150 billion naira annually to themselves and their Administrative staff, and collect same in defiance to whatever figure was fixed by the Executive in the budget preparation.
Apart from this illegality which has been ongoing since 1999, annual BUDGET PADDING, which translates to, insertions of new amounts for Constituency Projects, re-writing, re-inventing and distortion of the entire document to accommodate their whims and caprices by arriving at a total figure completely different from the original!
The SENATE is also a recluse of some sort where Governors who had served the constitutional EIGHT years in office BUT would still smuggle themselves to spend the rest of their unproductive lives because of the LOVE OF MONEY! Apart from two former governors/senators, who were successfully prosecuted and eventually convicted to spend SEVEN YEARS in prison after several years of trial, majority of them who have been indicted by the EFCC still walk free, to contest and win elections!

THE NIGERIAN LEGISLATURE PAY PACKAGE IS SYNONYMOUS TO ROBBERY OF THE TREASURY!
Welcome and Severance Packages for Nigerian Legislators are not Christmas, Easter or Sallah Hampers, both terminologies were coined by National Assembly paymasters to identify tons of monies paid to Nigerian Legislators, at the points of entry and disengagement from their four-yearly bazaar/jamboree, at the "hallowed" chambers! They have begun to collect these largesse with impunity! IS RMAFC ON DUTY OR RECESS? APC MUST GET IT RIGHT FROM THE BEGINNING OF THIS 9TH NATIONAL ASSEMBLY! There MUST be no jumbo salaries nor humongous allowances this time around!

WASTAGES IN GOVERNMENT MUST BE BLOCKED AT THIS NEXT LEVEL! What values have legislators added to the lives of the overall masses of the population they claim to represent from 1999-2019 - a period of 20 years, when most negative global indexes, relating to backwardness were the lot of successive governments until the last four years when fresh foundations for economic growth were laid by the incumbent APC Administration!
In 58 years of independence, has the lot of the TALAKAWAS improved with the annual figure of 469 legislators in the areas of education, health, transportation, housing, employment, SECURITY etc? The answer is NO! Interestingly these legislators were always the first to condemn Nigeria in concurrence to all foreign negative indexes in respect of the national poverty level, illiteracy level, insecurity, economy, corruption etc, when they should be held responsible for all socio-economic decays recorded against Nigeria!

NIGERIA SHOULD FOLLOW SENEGAL'S FOOTSTEPS AND SCRAP THE SENATE TO IMPROVE THE LOT OF THE DOWNTRODDEN!
On 19th September 2012, Senegalese legislators voted to SCRAP its Senate and SAVED an estimated United State $ 15 million dollars under the watch of Macky Sall, who was  re-elected in February, 2019, for a second term! President Buhari should do the same to create the necessary conducive atmosphere for the Parliamentary Democracy to take off from 2023! "A Stitch in time saves nine!"

Please look forward to more divine revelation in the next edition of Zion B-BC Newsletter as you share this with friends and remain blessed in the Lord. [For weekly access, to this newsletter, log on to:  facebook.com/zionfaithbible.believingchurch or http://www.zfbbc1.blogspot.com, https://www.google.com/+zionfaithbiblebelievingchurch.

If you have not accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Saviour, don’t miss this great opportunity as you pray this prayer: Lord Jesus; I confess that I am a sinner who needs to be saved through the grace of the New Testament of your Blood, shed on the Cross at Calvary; I renounce every sin in my life and accept you as my Lord and Saviour. Please forgive me and write my name in the Book of Life. Amen. If you prayed this prayer, you have been admitted into the family of sons and daughters of God, who are born-again. Congratulations.

I am, yours sincerely, Dr. David B.A. Olufon, Resident Pastor and Editor. 08130669886, 08098194390.  08080243066. G-mail- dvdolufon@gmail.com.