Senator Suleiman Adokwe representing Nasarawa south senatorial district has explained that legislative job can’t be on part-time basis even as he clarifies that that can be done if Nigerians so wish. Besides, he also speaks on the politics of Nasarawa state as well as the local government administration in the country. AHMED TUKUR reports
On part-time legislation proposed by confab
It is a recommendation but you know that the Nigerian public is divided over the matter of either part-time or permanent legislation. We have to look at the pros and cons of what is feasible and not. The conference itself is spending just about three months on a part time basis. We know what this nation is paying for it already and if you have that to continue for a period of four, five years, I am sure we are going to be spending something in the region of what you will be spending now for permanent legislators because certainly the cost is not going to be minimal as it is today and these are factors we must always look at before we do that. I do know there are very few countries in the world where the legislature is on a part-time basis.
Bringing down cost of presidential system of government
We are aware they are hues and cries over the cost of the presidential system and people are concerned by ways and means on which this cost can be reduced.
There are other ways the cost implications of the presidential system can be brought down. I am sure if you look very carefully if you make legislation a part-time basis they are bound to be some un- seriousness over it because legislation is something that is supposed to pre-occupy your time, is not just going to those plenary that amounts to legislation. There are so many things that you have to do. They are committee works, the plenary, consultation with constituency and reports to be read and analysed.
So my personal view is that i am not in support of that but if that is what Nigerians want, we are representing Nigerians we are going to do what Nigerians want.
Educational benchmark for state and federal lawmakers
The constitution is very clear on qualification which is a minimal of SSCE and also if you are elected there is a minimal number of days that you must attend which is about 181 days. Representative capacity does not require several Ph.d’s. It simply requires you knowing what your people want and then representing their interest. No doubt, it helps if the electorates will get somebody that is fit and proper and quite knowledgeable on many issues to represent them, but if they choose to elect somebody that doesn’t have those potentials it is their choice. But the bottom line is that people should elect whoever they want to represent them.
I think the idea of electing a representative is borne out of an idea of some one that knows your feelings and will present those feelings adequately no matter in what manner he does that as far as he is saying exactly what his people want him to say, the question of education qualification does not arise.
Although in our experience it helps for the person you are going to elect to be knowledgeable because the world is getting more and more sophisticated so you need to understand the economics, the political arithmetic, social issues and the need to legislate for the entire country. So, you need to know some current affairs where you will not look only at your own interest but that of the entire country
That is why when you are elected especially, in the Senate you become the senator of the federal republic and you legislate for the country and if you want your state to enjoy certain amenities, you must realise you are going to enjoy those amenities on the expense of tax payers from all other parts of the country.
So you need to make certain concessions too for the other parts of the country that need fundamental projects. So these are facts that will guide any community in electing their representative.
APC concentrating development in your constituency
Well, somebody drew my attention to certain announcement to that effect that my people- the Alago are gathering and is been sponsored by some of us in PDP and that is PDP agenda.
The first reply I will give to that is everybody knows I am PDP and I cannot do anything rather than promote the interest of the party PDP. Secondly in that same advert, after condemning the gathering as been political, it went ahead to enumerate what the governor has done which is invariably promoting the agenda of APC which is in order and there is no love lost as far as I am concerned. But sometimes, people in their overzealousness to be praise singers, they even accept and propagate falsehood.
There was a time in this state when a member of the state assembly publicly went to say that the government of Nasarawa state had built a bridge in his community when we all knew it was not true
I am not going to engage myself in disputation as to what somebody has done or not but the ordinary people who are seeing things should be able to say whether those things exist or not and they will naturally decide based on their convictions but not by beating the drums that you have done this or that.
If the voters chose to vote somebody who is not doing anything for them is their own headache they cannot turn round and complain because if you say he has done certain things that are not true and you gave him the vote, you can’t turn around tomorrow and cry and say that this government is not doing anything for us because the essence of democracy is to vote a candidate of your choice that you believe will deliver the dividends of democracy.
If your ignore those principles, that is your problem because half of the problem of Nigeria is that people dwell more on sentiment rather than the practicality of democracy and politics is about collecting the resources of the people and redistributing them so that there is development across the board.
They said they did a road from Lafia to Doma, the road which was awarded before they came to power and they claimed that they are the one who did it or somebody built his project you come and fenced it and repaint it and you say is your own.
The people there should know and stand to justify such claims but if they choose to ignore it and continue to vote for falsehood they are the people that will suffer and that are my own position.
Pressure on you to re-contest
They are issues that have been happening in this country such as insecurity which has made certain communities and lots of people have witnessed social and economic upheavals in their lives and sometimes it becomes very, very heavy for you in the presence of all this misery to come and insult the sensibility of people by asking them to vote for you again.
I have been more pre-occupied with ways and means of which we can deal with the human misery as it has been occasioned in this state, particularly in the southern senatorial district.
The displacement that had occurred because of communal clashes between farmers and herdsmen and also among various ethnic nationalities, as we are speaking, some people don’t have houses, they are still languishing in the rains. We have tried to intervene by providing some basic needs to alleviate their immediate needs.
Indeed, the state government only copied from us because though we don’t have a budget to execute but we intervened before the state government came in and we are now more worried about how these people can be rehabilitated.
I am glad that recently the governor himself went round Doma, Keana and Obi local government areas with a view to seeing how the displaced Tiv people can be taken back to their communities which is what is expected of a government to do.
Governments came to power primarily to provide welfare and protections of life and property. I don’t have the capacity as a legislator other than to make laws and use my legislative influences to call for certain things to take place. But a governor is the chief executive who can practically mobilise state machinery to provide for the welfare and the protection of lives of the citizens but not to capitalise on the misery of the people. People have been suffering for the past three years. It is only now they think they will respond in other to seek for their votes for re-election. It is unethical as far as I am concerned.
That is why all the calls on me to come out and stand for re-election, I find it extremely difficult for me at this point, I am just riding on the ways and going along with people seeing how we can ameliorate their sufferings. With time and if at the end of the day it is in their own best interest that I should represent them, i will do so. but I won’t throw insult in their faces. When somebody is suffering you come and tell him vote for me, it is not realistic.
I am been guided by the general problems. Look at the president of this country, he was initially going about doing solidarity rally but in the face of the crisis of the Chibok girls, those things had to be stopped and the increase in insurgency activity had to be faced squarely. All political activities had been called off by the president, the opposition party that was initially invoking such ethical issues are now the once going about doing the rallies that is why PDP always accuses them on capitalizing on the misery of people to make politics out it.
We see those examples every where once there is a crisis people rally round government and solve the problem. I have consistently in the last three years rallied round the governor of Nasarawa state whenever there is crisis because I do not believe in partisanship when people are suffering.
It is our duty to work with the government of the day to make sure the misery of the people are addressed and so we expect also that the government will do those things that are required so as to bring to an end the suffering of the people not to use it as a stepping stone to make political capital out of it. That is why most of campaign going on in the state now are unethical.
They are lot of people suffering, billboards are been destroyed here and there in the name of politics, people are moved from one end to the other. Alago people said they want to meet in Obi you said we are going to bring crisis when it was APC,s local government primary elections that brought out guns in Obi which was a crisis that should have been addressed not the one which people want to sit down and discuss their ethnic nationality.
They want to use the ethnic meeting which was with a good intention and make politics. So, as far as I am concerned, it is very typical of APC to create crisis where there is none and we have said it successfully that it is in APC state that we are having the incidences of Boko Haram because their governors cannot deal with it.
In fact, I was in government during Abdullahi Adamu. We had very serious crisis in Toto local government and part of the southern senatorial zone but I cannot remember that at a given time the problem became the problem of Obasanjo . it was only once that the military were sought to escort the Bassa people to their areas because virtually all the issues were resolved at the state level.
The same problem we had in Kaduna state, the then governor of Kaduna state Makarfi inherited the worst type of religious crisis but by the time he was through with it, the state became one of the most peaceful states without any reference at all to Obasanjo so that is what a governor is supposed to do in a state.
The entire governors should sit back in their state and workout how to ensure security of lives and property as truly chief security officers of their states with minimal support from the federal government.
This is happening because they have crippled the local governments, so how do you get the support of the village heads, councilors , and the local government chairmen who will help you maintain peace and order at that level?
For the past three years, it is only now that we have an elected local government council in Nasarawa state and apparently is not even allowed to function properly as a local government council because they are supposed to be properly financed and hold their regular meetings to deal with their problems as they arise.
Recently when we had a clash in Iggah the local government chairmen of Doma and that of Nasarawa Eggon went to the scene. That is what local government is all about dealing with issues as they arise but if you don’t provide the wherewithal for them to do so it amounts to exercise in futility.
If there is a local government allocation that comes to the state, it must be given to them because the constitution merely provides that there should be a state joint account but did not say that money to local government belongs to the state.
The state is supposed to be there to give its own contribution of ten percent from the internally generated revenue and then it will be distributed to the state not for the state to pay the salaries of local governments without the council’s approval or for the state to decide which contracts to be executed by the local governments because each local government has its own peculiarities.
So these are the basic issues we will continue to hammer on and in the National Assembly, we insisted that local governments must have their autonomy but the state governors opposed it vehemently and unfortunately most of them have pocketed their state House of Assemblies which have contributed in strangulating the evolution of the local government councils. But i believe as things are unfolding in this country today, we will overcome them.
