Godswill Akpabio, the president of the Senate, claims that among the three branches of government, lawmakers are the ones that Nigerians misunderstand and criticise the most.
He claims that Nigerians hold parliamentarians accountable for everything, even for circumstances that are beyond of their immediate control.
At the centenary celebration of Second Republic lawmaker Senator Kunle Oyero’s birthday held on Sunday in Abeokuta, Ogun State, hosted by the Abeokuta Grammar School Old Boys Association, the Senate President made this statement, represented by Senator Shuaib Salisu, the senator from Ogun Central.
Akpabio said, “The one arm of government that people don’t really understand and is always a subject of ridicule and attack is the legislature. In fact, people sometimes don’t think legislators do anything at all.
“The problem is that the metric of measuring the performance of the legislators by the electorate is different from what is contained in the syllabus. The syllabus will say as a legislator your role is to make laws, perform oversight functions and make appropriations; those are the three things a legislator must perform.
“But any senator that confines himself to that will not get a return ticket even in his party because the metric of measuring the performance of legislators is the number of transformers, and other material things they give to the people they are representing.”
