Peoples Daily

By Musa Adamu

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo yesterday took a swipe at the National Assembly, describing the Legislative arm as stinking of corruption just as he accused the lawmakers of ripping off Nigerians.
Obasanjo’s condemnation of the lawmakers is coming on the heels of public outcries over the increasing demand by members of the National Assembly for allowances.
He said the level of corruption in the National Assembly calls for concern and said there was need for the nation to rise up and tackle the problem of the escalating cost of maintaining lawmakers.
Speaking on his experience as a former military Head of State and a democratically elected president of the country, Obasanjo said as part of his measures to checkmate the corrupt tendencies in the National Assembly, he insisted on budgetary provision for constituency project.
Obasanjo, who spoke yesterday at a strategic retreat organised by Governor Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu of Niger state, said “Under the military regime, we had nothing like legislators who are ripping us off today. As a military Head of State, you will just wake up and bring up an idea, discuss it at the Supreme Military Council, get the state security council to endorse it and I append my signature.
“But today, what do you have? First reading, second reading, public hearing and they will come back and tell you, ‘Mr. President you see this thing is not alright.’ They will expect me to do something and I would say no.” 
Faulting the budgetary provision for constituency projects, the former president whose era was hallmarked with running battles with the lawmakers maintained that there was no need for constituency projects when the budgetary provision of the nation encapsulates all projects in every parts of the country.
“In civilian administration there is separation of powers between the Executives and the Legislatures and in Nigeria the function of the legislature is to make laws and not to award contracts. There is this thing they call constituency project allowance. What is constituency project when I have a budget that encapsulates projects in areas that you represent? This is why I fought them to a standstill during my administration but today, everything is back to square one.
“Nigerians must begin to take more than a passing interest in what our legislators are doing. It is unfortunate that today we don’t know how much it costs us to maintain a legislator. I believe it is about N250 million per annum. According to a newspaper report of today (yesterday), our lawmakers are about the costliest in the whole world. This cannot continue,” he said.
On the sorry state of agriculture, the former president blamed successive governments of not continuing on programs initiated by their predecessors, saying if previous governments had continued on policies laid by successive governments on agriculture since, Nigeria would have been exporting rice and other agricultural produce today.
Obasanjo revealed that when he returned to government in 1999, he met the country importing 200 million tones of rice per annum and by the time he left, he had brought down the rate to about a half, regretting however,  that the country had slide back to the pre- 1999 again.
He said governments must learn to keep good policies of previous governments so that Nigeria would make progress. He expressed hope that the good policies of Governor Aliyu would not be reversed when he finally leaves power.
Obasanjo, who identified sense of mission, integrity, courage, trust, discipline, fear of God, human spirit and team management as the good qualities of leadership, called on lasting policies that would impact on the lives of citizenry.

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