The legislature can keep fighting while their relevance keeps dwindling
When you ask a typical Nigerian on the street about how much the government affects his life, he will talk about the executive arm and probably the judiciary and hardly the legislature. Average Nigerians do not discuss the legislature except of course when it is about their ‘jumbo’ pay. Maybe this is due to ignorance or maybe the legislatures have in the last 16 years not really proven their effectiveness to the masses. Only God knows how many impeachable offices the Nigerian presidents between 1999 to date have committed, but the National Assembly allowed them to walk away scot-free.
Nothing in the last 100 days has shown that anything has changed as this 8th National Assembly made the worst possible start one can think of. They have spent most of the last three months fighting over leadership positions without initiating or debating a single bill. Buhari himself is yet to seriously need their help.
Save for the few communications between him and the Senate and some interventions for reconciliation, the legislature has not featured significantly in Buhari’s activities in the last 100 days in office. Whether the National Assembly will redeem itself early enough to make any impact in this dispensation or we may have to look up to only the executive and judiciary, time will tell. Perhaps its time we have one strong unicameral legislature instead of a highly expensive and indecisive bicameral one.
