High turnover of legislators a setback for Nigerian democracy, says Sulaiman

The Director General of the National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies (NILDS), Professor Abubakar Sulaiman, in this interview with ADAMU ABUH, expresses his concerns about the high turnover rate of members of the National Assembly and how to improve capacity building for sustenance of democracy.

What is your opinion on the high turnover of members of the National Assembly over the years? It's been a tall order since 1999. In fact, the legislature is the only branch of government that has suffered many setbacks in recent years. 63 years of independence from Nigeria due to military intervention in governance. He has been unable to keep an eye on the executive and the judiciary.

NILDS Director General, Professor Abubakar Sulaiman

The principle that envisioned the legislature, give it a bounty of allowing senators or members of the House of Representatives to be in the seat as long as their constituents continue to elect them, unlike the executive where you can't not stay more than two terms, as well as judicial where you have an age limit.

The founding fathers of democracy granted it this freedom because they knew it remains the very embodiment of democracy. But in Nigeria the electorate does not appreciate the primacy of this weapon, I would not know or could it be that the electorate themselves do not even know the essence of being a first instance legislator, at because of our level of political culture?

It is unfortunate that we continue to have this high turnover in every election. This has serious consequences for our democracy. Legislative business is serious business, it is not for everyone. You can be a lawyer, even a professor or an engineer, but you still need to be trained, supervised and exposed to legislative skills.

So that you are exposed to legislative affairs on how bills are deliberated and motions are moved; it wouldn't take less than a year or more. So you need a year to study the basics, two years to sit down and legislate properly, the next year you start preparing for the elections, then the business of the four-year term would end.

Thus, having trained a senator, it is after three to four years that he can fight his chest to say that he is now a legislator. Then, all of a sudden, he runs for office and doesn't come back. So you have to start all over again by passing the new person who arrives. This has financial implications for his training, as you need to expose him to local and international training.

Imagine you start working on a bill process, maybe it got to the second stage and because the senator who sponsored it doesn't come back, another senator who doesn't know can -be not even where he left off comes to replace him to start it all over again. The same goes for keeping tabs on the governance process. This has affected critical bills like GDP in the years before it was recently passed.

It's a downside to us as a country in terms of governance, funding, waste of resources, and loss of manpower from legislators who know the job. This has been the recurring decimal for the past 23 years, and this year is even more worrying.

In previous years, this happened around the time of the main election, but from what we saw this year, it happened during the primaries. Today, out of 109 senators, more than 70% do not return. By the time we hold the main election, it would be miraculous for 20% of senators to win and return to the National Assembly. The same thing happens to members of the House of Representatives.

There is a state assembly where only five members would return. This is a worrying development for us as an Institute and it should be worrying for us as a nation. It's not the electorate saying we don't want these legislators. It's either their political parties or other factors. A o...