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Fayemi: We can do away with senate

 

The Governor of Ekiti State, Kayode Fayemi, has said the nation can scrap the Senate as all the country really needs is a unicameral legislature.
Speaking at the just concluded 25th edition of the Nigerian Economic Summit Group conference, the governor said Nigeria has to look into the size of government.
“We do need to look at the size of government in Nigeria and I am an advocate of a unicameral legislature. What we really need is the house of representatives because that is what represents,” he said at a session monitored by online medium, The Cable.
“You have three senators from little Ekiti and you have three senators from Lagos state. It’s a no-brainer that it’s unequal, I guess the principle is not proportionality but that if you are a state, you get it automatically but I think that we can do away with that. There are several things that we can do away within the government.
“The Oronsaye report that proposed mergers of several MDAs that are doing the same thing is something that the government should pay serious attention to and reduce the resources being expended on them.”
Nigeria’s national assembly consists of a senate with 109 members and a 360-member house of representatives.
Defending the security vote spent by governors, Fayemi, who was also former minister of mines and steel, said: “Security vote exists in various forms and not just in Nigeria. They may not call it security vote, they may call it contingency vote.
“The important thing is the government utilises a wide range of mechanism to guarantee security in a state and it is not just ammunition and weapons that I am talking about. Even keeping the touts in check is a security challenge in many states and managing that process may cost you money that you cannot necessarily show the auditors.
“Let me also say this, you will not hear it out there from anybody. When people are kidnapped and their relatives are harassing the governor or security institutions to track down the victims.
“We track them down, we know where they are. What you hear us say outside is that we don’t pay ransom and we stick by that. We don’t pay ransom, we don’t bribe kidnappers but we get those people released.”
Fayemi was on the panel alongside Babatunde Fowler, executive chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Jordi Borrut Bel, Nigerian Breweries MD, and Eme Essien, country manager of the International Finance Corporation (IFC).

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