9th Reps: Why I’ll push for 6-year single term – Dyegh

In this interview John Dyegh, a third term member who represents the Gboko/Tarka federal constituency of Benue state in the House of Representatives, says equity demands that North-central geo-political zone should produce the 9th House speaker. JOSHUA EGBODO brings excerpts.

Joining the race rather late

The lawmaker, who holds a doctor of Economic History, recently declared his intention to contest for speakership of the House. Some think he has joined the race late. But he said “No, the simple answer here is we are on it and we are hoping for the best.”

Reasons for the high number of contestants

Number one, at a time, the party (the All Progressives Congress, (APC which he belongs) has not officially zoned the position of the speaker. “So as far as I am concerned (then), there was no official position to this. What we were seeing in the papers had not been communicated to any of us officially. The party had not called a meeting to say look, members and members-elect, this is the direction of the party, we are going North-east, we are going South-west, we are going North-central. The party hasn’t done that and in my opinion that was the reason for the many aspirants coming out for this position.

Why the North-central agitation

 Politicians do their own permutations, their own arithmetics as you would call it and we in the North-central, we have discovered that the position we had in the 8th Assembly which is the senate presidency has been officially zoned by the party to the North-east, which means in the national assembly the North-central geo-political zone will not have anything reasonable.

And so, the first consideration is that, if you are taking number three from the North-central, it is only fair that you give us number four. In other words, if you are taking away the senate president from the North-central which by protocol is number three, it is only right and fair that you give us number four and not number six as is being speculated. In the spirit of equity and fair play and justice, if you are taking the position of senate president from the North-central, you give them the speaker.

More so if you are talking about the quantum of votes that made the federal government today, the North-west brought in the number one votes, the North-east brought in the number two votes and the North-central bought in the number three votes.

So if reward in politics, in the democratic setup, is based on what you bring to the table, it only goes to show that our votes should also count. The votes we have brought to form the federal government which is number three, South-west is very far behind us, number four, they already have the position of the vice president.

So we are saying we deserved to be given the position of speaker, if you took the position of senate president from us, the law of justice and fair play and equity will tell you that you should give us the position of speaker. Of the many people that are coming out for speakership most of us are from the north central.

Dumping Idris Wase, even as DG of his campaign organization

You would have seen publications in the papers, it is there in the public domain, it is not me saying it any longer, that the man (Hon Idris Wase) is going in for deputy speaker, but was that not the dream of the North-central.

In the North-central, we believe that the position of speaker should come to us, if number three is taken away from us, the position of number four should be given to us and if anybody vying for the position of the speaker decides to go for the position of deputy speaker, common sense, if I am your DG, I will go for the position, not as if I wasn’t qualified when I was doing DG for anybody.

 My agenda if elected speaker

I am going to tell you just one thing, I have discovered in my stay here, this is my third time, there is very high turnover of legislators. It is something that bothers me and it is something that should bother every Nigerian. It is something that should bother those that are particularly in politics.

If you want our democracy to grow, nascent as it is, you should be deliberate about churning up policies and legislations that make our democracy grow and take it to the next level.

What am I trying to say; when I become speaker by the grace of God, deliberately we shall bring out legislation by amendment of the constitution wherein, we will try to reduce this situation of high turnover of legislators and what are we going to do differently.

We are not going to give money to legislators to go and campaign but we have discovered that legislative experience is being wasted, therefore we want to seek an amendment in collaboration with the executives, wherein we will extend the tenure of legislators from four years to six years, and that means legislative experience will count.

When you come in just for four years and go back, it really doesn’t make sense, it is not good for our democracy. So at least one should stay for three years and if you do six years times two that is at least 12 years, so it is going to make more sense for our democracy.

And indeed even if you do only one term, you know that you have contributed six years and it will make more sense than this four years tenure. And like I said, we are going to do that in collaboration and cooperation of the executives. We need their buy in; so these are some of the things we are going to do for our members to ensure that they stay more in the national assembly.

Like it is done in other climes, yes they do four year terms but you discover that experience counts. In the US you see people staying 48years but it is difficult for us to get to that level. So if it is difficult for us to get to a situation where one is voted in the legislature for like 10 times, why don’t we elongate the tenure of legislators so that legislative experience will count?

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So if it is difficult for us to get to a situation where one is voted in the legislature for like 10 times, why don’t we elongate the tenure of legislators so that legislative experience will count?

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