PRP Wants Senate Scrapped to Cut Cost of Governance
POLITICS DIGEST – As part of the continuous move to cut cost of governance in Nigeria, the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP) on Wednesday called for the scrapping of the Senate in the country.
The party’s national chairman, Malam Falalu Bello, made the call while addressing newsmen in Abuja, alongside other executives of the party.
The party also challenged President Muhammadu Buhari to fulfil his campaign promise on reducing the cost of governance in the country.
Bello said before the scrapping of the upper chamber, the N125bn budget of the National Assembly should be slashed by 50 percent.
“Considerably reduce the cost of the legislature to the economy which is one of the highest, if not the highest in the world, by reducing its budget to no more than half, or abolishing the bicameral legislature and making it unicameral as done by sensible and sensitive nations in recent history.
“Nigeria is a poor nation and cannot afford a bicameral assembly paying itself so handsomely without any checks on its expenditures. We would be with the president if he initiates a serious downward review of the costs of the National Assembly to the nation,” he said.
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The party urged President Buhari to fulfil his campaign promise of reducing the cost of governance and the budget of the presidency.
“Reduce the expenditures at the Executive branch, beginning with the highest level of government, that is the Presidency. The President should honour some of his campaign promises which include reducing the presidential fleet, cutting the budget of the Presidency as a means of giving him the moral courage and strength to reduce the unnecessary and over bloated wage bill and cost of governance in Nigeria.
“Reducing some ministries and merging some MDA’s as conceived by previous administrations. We urge President Buhari to have the courage of looking into and implementing in whole or in part the Stephen Oronsaye report as a means of reducing the cost of governance in Nigeria,” PRP said.
The party, while calling for collective efforts to address vote buying, rigging and other electoral malpractices, said elections are an important ingredient in a liberal democratic polity.
“But elections, in and by themselves, do not guarantee democracy. Where elections are devoid of transparency, inclusiveness and equity, they become hollow and cynical rituals devoid of any meaning or credibility.
“Sadly, this is the verdict that all honest and dispassionate observers of the charades that have gone on this year in the name of elections, both the general elections held earlier in the year and the just-concluded elections in Kogi and Bayelsa states,” it stated.
