Senator representing Imo West Senatorial District, Owelle Rochas Okorocha, yesterday, a reduction in the number of lawmakers representing each state in the Senate to one and in the House of Representatives to three.
He said the cut would lead to a cut in the cost of running the legislature.
This would bring the total number of federal lawmakers to 146, from the current 469, a 69 per cent reduction.
He said this at the floor of the Senate while reacting to the report presented by the Committee on Finance and National Planning on the 2020-2022 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Fiscal Planning Strategy Paper (FSP).
He joins a growing list of Nigerians who have called for a reduction in the cost of maintaining the legislature.
“What (are) three senators doing that one senator cannot do? Here, we have three senators per state. In that National Assembly (House of Representatives) over there, we have 360 eligible human beings. This country must begin to make sacrifices and cut down the cost of governance. I do not know what we are doing differently today in the ninth Senate from what we did in the eighth Senate and what we did in the seventh Senate, sixth Senate and so forth and so on. And if what we are doing today is similar to what we did in the eighth Senate be rest assured the product will be the same…
“Let’s proffer solutions and not creating more problems for the executives. They are waiting for us. What do we have different to show? The summary of what we have been talking about is money, we don’t have enough funds to support the needs of Nigerians, to create jobs and put food on the table of the common man.
“This problem arises from the fact that we depend on only one source of income which is crude oil, which consists of over 50 per cent of our revenue and 90 per cent of our foreign reserves, and this oil is static. We should look inwards. Let’s cut our clothes according to our materials, not our sizes. The budget of Nigeria is cut according to our size not the material available, and according to the solution.”
Lawan then advised Okorocha to sponsor a bill which would amend the part of the constitution that provides the current representative number in both Houses.