Senator Ndoma-Egba Roots For Bicameral Legislature

The Senate Leader, Sen. Victor Ndoma-Egba has restated his support for a bicameral legislature in Nigeria for the simple reason that it is not as expensive as is being speculated. He stated this in an interactive session with journalists at the Ernest Etim Bassey Press Centre in Calabar.

According to him the bicameral system is good  for Nigeria given its pluralistic nature: “we have bicameral legislature where you have a pluralistic society, where there is a divergence in tribes, culture, religion and everything. If you research, the only society that is near homogeneous is Korea. Where society is diverse, multi-ethnic, multicultural, where you have majorities and you have minorities, the strategy of bicameral legislature is to accommodate the fears  and anxiety of everybody.”

“If you look at most plural societies, they are operating bicameral legislatures, because where you have two houses, elections to the lower house is usually based on population. Election to the upper house is usually based on the equality of federating units and in our own case, equality of states. If we had a unicameral legislature, a minority man like me from Aparabong would never be in the Senate not talk of being a senate leader because election to that unicameral legislature would be on the basis of population. Upon that basis, you don’t stand the chance, the bigger tribes; the bigger components of my constituency would always swallow us up”.

“It is only when you use the equality of State that people like me can emerge not only as a senator but also a senate leader. So, bicameralism is meant to address the fears of the weakest who are also entitled to State protection. And is there any price too high to pay to protect the weak in any country? It is not an issue of cost parse; it’s not the naira issue, not the cost benefit situation. It has nothing to do with cost. Let us do an analysis and see if truly that national assembly is the problem of Nigeria. They have just submitted the budget of Nigeria for 2014, I have not read but I heard its N4.3 trillion and that amount does not include the Sure-P component of the budget. So, let us just assume that Sure-P is one hundred billion which would not be too far more than that and so that is N4.7 trillion which the budget of 2013.”

“Now, in the last 5 or 6 years, including the 2014 budget that  has just been submitted, the budget of the national assembly is N150 billion and it has not changed in the last 5 -6 years. The amount includes our capital components and our recurrent components. It include the salaries of members of  the national assembly like me, it also include the salaries of civil servants we have in the national assembly talking about all the bureaucracies therein, from the clerk of the national assembly, to the cleaner in the national assembly.

It takes care of the national assembly service commission too, this include the salary of the chairman of the commission, the secretary and other. It Includes the salaries and allowances of workers in the national institute of legislative studies, from the director general to several professors therein and other. It includes our subscription to international parliamentary bodies”.