Nigeria, June 22, 2016 – Constitutional lawyer and Chairman, Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption, Professor Itse Sagay is crossed with the legislature on a number of issues.
Topical among this is over their bloated remuneration and the recent issue of immunity and pension for officers of the National Assembly. He spoke on Politics Today on Raypower. Our correspondent captured his utterance which is not less than the venom of an angry cobra for your enjoyment.
THE group of people we have presently at the National Assembly are the worst of Nigerians ever to have found their ways into power of any type and they are just sitting there, to promote their own selfish interest, do anything for themselves at the expense of Nigerians generally
Nature of Lawmakers
If you go to pure raw human nature, human nature that is nasty, brutish and short, that is the type of human nature that we have now at the legislative level.
If you look at the political history of this country and if you follow it closely as I have, you will see that the group of people we have presently at the National Assembly are the worst of Nigerians ever to have found their ways into power of any type and they are just sitting there, to promote their own selfish interest, do anything for themselves at the expense of Nigerians generally.
Remuneration
Let’s look at it, they are already there, they are earning the highest remuneration of any legislature in the world, they are the highest earners in Nigeria. We have calculated their take home and daily allowance to be together about N15 million a month and in the face of what is happening in this country, you don’t need any person to say that these demands are outrageous, insensitive, immoral and an act of provocation on Nigerians because as we speak now millions of civil servants have not been paid for months, they are going hungry, they are demonstrating on the streets, millions of Nigerians youths are jobless 15 years after graduating from university, the Nigerian economy is prostrate, desperate, trying to survive and the current Senate President is already earning a pension from Kwara State as a former governor. The other legislatures are made up of ex governors, ex this and ex that who are already earning enough, huge totally unacceptable sum of money.
The jeeps
Recently you recall when they went to buy cars for themselves, they fixed the price at 33 million per car in a country which is broke, the vast majority have no cars, were public transport is very poor. So taking all these together you cannot say that I am very hard or hash. I think this people are getting to a point that they want to provoke Nigerians to violence, and that is what they are really doing, because you are so insensitive that you don’t care about the environment in which you are living and you want to live in heaven that is situated in hell, and others will be in hell and you will be in heaven enjoying yourself, you are not being realistic, you are really looking for trouble.
Why Immunity
So what, why should somebody who is just going there to spend four years earn pension? This people in fact technically should be out of power now because in the past one year they have spent less than 180 days in the senate and the constitution demands a minimum of 180 days so technically if somebody goes to court now they will be ousted, because none of them by law deserves to be there, because they have done nothing, they have done below the minimum the constitution requires, and they are the one consuming the most of our resources in this country per head.
So I don’t really know what you are talking about, if you want immunity, is it immunity or impunity, you call it, do you begin so seek immunity as you call it , for what, are you going to commit crime, are you planning to commit crimes and then you want advanced protection and you want Nigerians to help guarantee that so that you can commit acts of degradation against them? Well none of you is asking this questions, if you are complacent about it, I am not , I am passionate about it, Nigerians have been robbed and looted and made retched and miserable enough and we will not allow this group of people to continue to do that, and for me it is a passionate thing and we will not allow it happen.
Nigerians got it wrong
We were very wrong in allowing them to operate under the sought of constitution we are operating now, what we are to do, which is inevitable now is to have a part time legislature. No more full time, you come you have your job, you have your profession, you come in at different time of the year, you have legislation, we pay you allowance for sitting and then you go home as it used to be in the first republic.
This tendency I don’t know whether to call it black man tendency to be so self connected that it does not have a sense of service but a sense of self-service at the expense of millions, there is that tendency, very animal tendency, of picking everything around you at the expense of others, so we have to come in by putting very strict laws and regulations in place, they come in as part time, we pay them for sitting and at the end of the day they go back and do their jobs. We cannot entrust our future, our economy and our government on them because they are unfit for the job.
Part time legislature and constitutional conference
The opportunity may have arisen, but definitely they would have opposed it, you have seen the type of amendments they have proposed, all those amendments are usually those that are favourble to them.
So we need real soul searching, by that I mean the executive arm of government need to really sit down and come out with a blueprint based on a thorough review of all the conferences we have had and propose it to Nigerians and let there be a national debate about the future of governance in this country, particularly on the issue of the legislature and the question of federalism and all those issue let them have a debate based on the committee study of the various recommendations we have had so that we can have a way forward.
