A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Abiodun Salami, has called for the adoption of a unicameral legislative system to reduce cost of governance.
Salami, a former Assistant Publicity Secretary of the party in Lagos State, made the call during an interview on Sunday.
He was reacting to calls in some quarters that the country should jettison its current two-chamber National Assembly and adopt a unicameral legislature to reduce cost of governance.
Unicameral legislature is a system with one chamber or house, unlike a bicameral legislature which has two chambers (Senate and House of Representatives).
Some countries with unicameral legislatures include China (National People’s Congress) Sweden (Riksdag) Norway (Storting) Denmark (Folketing)and Portugal (Assembly of the Republic).
Salami said the Senate and House of Representatives should be merged, then the number of legislators pruned, to have a single-chamber legislature.
He said operating the House of Representatives and the Senate together is a burden on the country’s resources.
He said, “Bi-cameral legislature is wasteful. We can merge the Senate and the House of Representatives to have a single house to ease the business of lawmaking and reduce the huge funds spent to maintain the two chambers that we have now.
“We can merge the two chambers and then reduce the number of lawmakers .The country spends a lot maintaining the 109 Senators and 360 members of the House of Representatives. We are having challenges with the economy right now. We should be ready to make sacrifices and take bold steps. The bicameral legislature we have, to me, is frivolity.”
Salami said those who argued that unicameral legislature was not suited for the presidential system of government that Nigeria operates had limited knowledge of how things work in other countries.
“Those who argue that Nigeria, as a presidential system, cannot adopt unicameral legislature are wrong .They need to check well as there are some countries running the same presidential system as ours and still run unicameral legislature. Liberia and South Sudan both run the presidential system of government, but do not have the Senate and the House of Representatives as we have; They run one-chamber legislature.
“Unicameral legislature is less expensive. You do not need to buy many SUVs for the many lawmakers. You do not have to spend too much money on allowances. If we really care about improving governance, then we should adopt it,” he said.
The APC chieftain also said the country would save cost by selecting ministers from the legislature.
“I think we should also jettison the idea of picking ministers outside of the legislature. It will save us a lot of money.
“The legislators are experienced people. Some of them are experts and some ex-governors and ministers, so they are experienced in governance. We can pick among them and make them ministers while still serving as lawmakers.
“I represented a ward in Kosofe LG as a councillor under the defunct UNCP in the 90s.While serving as councillor, I was also made the supervisor for agriculture, which is an executive position .So ,we can adopt this too at the national level .It will save us a lot”, he said.
