A former speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon Yakubu Dogara, has charged state legislators to effectively check the excesses of governors and hold them to account for their stewardship.
In a paper titled: “Effective Leadership for Emerging Legislatures: Lessons, Challenges, Opportunities and Recommendations” he presented at the technical session for speakers of state Houses of Assembly in Abuja at the weekend, Dogara tasked the speakers not to allow the executive destroy the country’s democracy.
He said, “Until you make the legislature grow in strength in relation to the executive and other parties, history will not be kind to you. For you to be said to be an effective leader, obstacles that deter others must spur you on.”
In a statement issued in Bauchi by his media aide, Turaki Hassan, Dogara said, “Always remember the saying that, ‘Liberty is as rare as it is fragile’. Wedged uneasily between tyranny and anarchy.” He said Nigeria was practicing monocracy and not democracy.
Monocracy is a form of government and political system based on the personal rule of an individual without a specific origin, legitimacy, and rules for exercising and transferring power. It can also take the form of a dictatorship exercised in the name of a republic or democracy, or in the name of the people. The term doesn’t refer to traditional monarchy and has a broader meaning.
To buttress his assertion, Dogara said, “For those who doubt that we are in a monocracy and not democracy, let me point at one recent example. After the executive had raised trillions of naira by means of ways and means not only in the absence of express legislative authorisation but in violation of the express provisions of Section 38 of the CBN Act of 2007 (as amended), the parliament was asked to approve the advances to the government which had risen from just about N789.6 billion in May, 2015, to N22.7 trillion in 2023.
