For a government to be highly effective it must be as close as possible to the grass-root and must adequately meet the needs of its citizens. Also, the policy framework should be in-depth ensuring that all views are seen and heard first-hand.
The call for a deeper understanding of the current restructuring debate by the Vice President Yemi Osinbajo comes at a time when some major issues confronting Nigeria revolve around resource control and accountability. It is, therefore, crucial to look at it from the perspective of the Nigeria's governing system and its inexplicable expensiveness, corruptibility and vulnerability.
For a government to be highly effective it must be as close as possible to the grass-root and must adequately meet the needs of its citizens. Also, the policy framework should be in-depth ensuring that all views are seen and heard first-hand. The ineffectiveness of our current presidential system lingers over the legislature and the presidency where there seems to be a high-level of incoherence between the two arms, more so as reflective of past incidences and the on-going case of the senate president, Bukola Saraki, his emergence as the senate president, the issues of corruption charges against him and the one bothering on forgery by some senate principal officers, as well as the somewhat resolved but unforgotten issue of who to be the speaker of the house of representative. Altogether, restructuring the hallowed senate chamber and the presidency would be that Nigeria should adopt the parliamentary system which is more in tuned with the constitutional monarchies practised by nations such as the United kingdom, Sweden, Japan and Canada. One key element of the system is that the prime minister will be a member of the legislature. In Nigeria's own case, the house of common will have the members of parliament elected from each local government or at least from the Senatorial district in a more strict context of national savings. Specifically, the head of government is elected as a prime minister. The system would greatly reduce the overhead cost of governance while ensuring a very lean running cost. Moreover, the prime minister as a member of the legislature will have a cabinet that is more informed of events as they are and be able to react accordingly and more timely in the inclusive sights of Nigerians.
Secondly, while President Buhari had indicated his strong stance on ending corruption and despite the mind-boggling revelations of corruptions in nearly every nook and cranny of our nation's space, the main concern for us as Nigerians should be how to sustain the anti-corruption crusade. Therefore, the restructuring must ensure transparency irrespective of resource control by any section of the country and, basically, it must permeate accountability for every tax payers' money, eliminating all secretive budgets and unreasonable security votes at all levels of government be it at the federal, state and the local governments. In addition, if restructuring Nigeria is to be in favour of resource control, which in my opinion would encourage healthy competition in a market economy, then the prerogative to bail out states that are unable to meet up their financial responsibilities should be put in place under determination by the parliament and the central bank of Nigeria.
Finally, considering that the existing Nigeria presidential system has given so much power to the executive at the centre, so much budget control and padding to the Senate such as to the extent of portraying them as winning elections for their own personal gains instead of the very people they have been elected to serve; it is appropriate to argue that restructuring Nigeria should not be too late, in fact, it's long overdue, and it must closely model the parliamentary, democratic system.
Taiwo Adetiloye
Twitter @ toadetiloye
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