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From Oluseye Ojo, Ibadan
YORUBA Council of Elders (YCE) has pushed for unicameral legislature in the National Assembly with a view to reducing the cost of governance in Nigeria.
Its Secretary General, Kunle Olajide said the country had no business operating a bicameral legislature in the National Assembly with 109 senators and 360 members in the House of Representatives, making it a total of 469 lawmakers at the National Assembly.
Olajide, who stated this in an interview with Daily Sun, said under a unicameral legislature, three persons should be made to represent each state of the federating units at the National Assembly.
“We have no business having a bicameral legislature in the National Assembly. There are 469 people that are members of both House of Representatives and the Senate. What are they doing there? The power should reside in the federating units. We have state assemblies that make laws and state laws should be policed by state police. There are a lot of things that needed to be changed. We don’t need more than a unicameral legislature and perhaps three people per the federating units.”
Olajide recalled that in the 1958 and 1963 Constitution of Nigeria, only 16 items were on the exclusive legislative list for the Federal Government, with the Federal Capital Territory in Lagos then.
