Salihu Lukman, a former National Vice Chairman North-west of the All Progressives Congress (APC), has expressed concerns that the current National Assembly is failing to represent the interests of Nigerians effectively.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In a statement issued on Tuesday, Lukman argued that both chambers of the National Assembly are primarily accountable to themselves rather than the public. He highlighted that the Public Accounts Committees, which are supposed to oversee the management of funds allocated to the National Assembly, have not been effective.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Lukman stressed that this issue has led to a situation where the National Assembly, including its leadership and members, lacks the moral authority to regulate the conduct of the executive arm of government. Consequently, they operate under the influence of the President and the executive branch, almost as if they are employees of the executive.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Lukman noted that the President and members of the executive use various incentives to ensure the compliance of the National Assembly. This situation leaves the Assembly with little choice but to approve every proposal from the executive, even when these proposals are detrimental to public interests. He asserted that this dynamic has turned the Assembly into a liability, leading to its eventual ineffectiveness.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
He concluded, \u201cThe point is, Nigerian democracy, as it is, is not functionally representing the interest of citizens largely because the parliament represented by the two chambers of the National Assembly \u2013 Senate and House of Representatives \u2013 have involuntarily submitted themselves to the narcissistic control of the president. Until and unless the parliament can free itself from the president, it will almost be impossible for it to develop the capacity of defending and protecting the interests of Nigerians.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Salihu Lukman, a former National Vice Chairman North-west of the All Progressives Congress (APC), has expressed concerns that the current National Assembly is failing to represent the interests of Nigerians effectively. In a statement issued on Tuesday, Lukman argued that both chambers of the National Assembly are primarily accountable to themselves rather than the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":37113,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37112"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37114,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37112\/revisions\/37114"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}