Legislators Can't Mend Their Ways —Utomi

Professor Pat Utomi, the Chairman of the Social Democratic Mega Party has asserted  that if the  Nigerian public expects members of the National Assembly to change,  they are  asking for the impossible.

He made the assertion owhile speaking with  newsmen in his Ikoyi home recently.

Utomi revealed that far more than Sanusi dared speak of during a public forum at the  University of Benin, the legislators are fleecing the nation and impeding  development in the most scandalous ways.

“It is common knowledge that there is no ministry, department or parastatal that  gets its budget passed without conceeding a percentage of it to them in bribes. It  got to such an exasperating level that a friend of mine heading a parastatal loudly  complained that key funds planned to effect developmental changes in the parastatal  are conceeded to the rapacious ways of these legislators.

“And if you confront them with these facts, they would come up with the lame excuse  that it cost them plenty to get to where they are,” Utomi stated.

“It would take strong people’s action in which we would march up to the National  Assembly to demand for the mass resignation of these legislators before we can  reinstate sanity in the system,” he added.

He pointed out that nothing short of concerted efforts by the people to sack the  legislators and insist on the running of the chambers by committed men and women  would save the nation from the greedy ways of the legislators.

Utomi reiterated his call for a part-time legislature in contrast to the present  full-time legislators. “I have said times without number that what this nation needs  is a Part-Time Legislature in which elected officials working as everyday  professionals; lawyers, doctors, engineers, journalists, business-people, leaders of  industry and so on, would come together a few weeks in the year to review the  workings of legislations on the polity and make new laws.”

He condemned the present system in which the legislators would live in the splendour  of Abuja, far away from the sufferings and realities of everyday living in Nigeria.  “No meaningful legislation would come from such style of working,” he said.

  Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2010 P.M.News