Our Lawmakers Must Be Responsible

Constituency funds and the use to which they are put is becoming a serious cause for concern to Nigerians as many of them continue to await the much touted dividends of democracy, twelve years after.

While some lawmakers in the upper and lower chambers of the National Assembly and their state Assembly counterparts have behaved responsibly by using their constituency allowances judiciously and to the benefit of the electorate, others have refused to be bothered about the people, using the funds to build mansions, buy luxury vehicles and maintain their string of girlfriends.

According to the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and other laws that guide the use of constituency funds, these monies are to be used to improve the quality of life of the constituents being represented by these lawmakers but in many cases, the exact opposite has been the case.

Legislators in our part of the world have often behaved like people without a conscience, many of them self-serving and taking the electorate for granted, believing they are responsible to nobody.

Only a few of them have been conscientious in the development of their constituents and constituency, giving allowances to the elderly, donating JAMB and WASSCE forms to students, offering scholarships, empowering the indigent and generally doing things to eradicate poverty and disease.

There is a need to monitor how these constituency allowances are spent, to make sure greedy lawmakers do not deprive the people of their rights as citizens of this country.

A situation in which constituency funds are frittered away on frivolities is unacceptable, hence the need to warn our lawmakers not to abuse their positions as most of them are doing.

Though many things are not the way they should be, if the people we elected to put things right join the bandwagon of looters of our collective wealth, where then lies the hope of a better tomorrow?

What is wrong with a legislator picking a primary or secondary school to make those places better for the young scholars?

We laud the efforts of those lawmakers who are genuinely trying to positively touch the lives of the electorate through their programmes of making life better for the downtrodden, but we believe they can do more. Donating a few grinding machines, sewing machines and boreholes is not enough, as many of them spend only a little fraction of what they get on their constituents. Boreholes and medical checkups are commendable but how do we monitor how much was collected by the lawmakers and how much was really spent? Very few of the electorate want to know. They only want an improved quality of life as poverty is grinding many families to dust, with no one to complain to.

Let our elected representatives think about their constituents and what history will say about them. They must stop looking at their constituency allowances as their own share of the national cake. What some of our lawmakers collect can set up cottage industries and reduce unemployment in their constituencies. Their contributions to the wellbeing of the masses can make Nigeria a better country.

Every day we read about lawmakers doing things to improve the lives of the people but those who do this are very few. How do we handle those who do nothing when there are no machineries to measure performance or ensure compliance?

Politics should not be about making money or feathering an individual’s nest. It ought to be about service to the people and we are not seeing enough of this.