Speaker, State of Osun House of Assembly, Rt. Hon. Najeem Salaam has
appealed to President Muhammadu Buhari to assent the constitutional
amendment that accommodates autonomy of state Houses of Assembly.
Speaking at a closing segment of the Legislative Retreat of Kwara State
House of Assembly in Ede, State of Osun, Speaker Salaam stressed that, for
the the training and special skill acquisition on legislative matter to
attain level of practicality, the autonomy must be obtained.
He said, “if a state parliament is self accounting, the chances are high
that checks and balance contemplated by the framers of the constitutional
democracy would be attained, but if a parliament would rely on executive
for funding, then we should know that independence is redefined.”
Speaker Salaam then expressed his optimism on the preparedness of the
state legislatures across the federating units of the country, saying over
two third majority of the state assemblies endorsed the autonomy at the
last constitutional amendment.
In a related development, Speaker Salaam further pleaded with lawmakers of
the state Houses of Assembly to halt the habitual haste of changing
leadership of the parliament, saying that roving impeachment of Speakers
had made assemblies unstable to the advantage of the executive.
According to him, “Another sore point in the weakness of legislature is
incessant changing of leadership and until we halt the trend, the
executive would continue to take the advantage of the situation, and we
would not blame it for supporting a trend that keeps its interest, because
this is politics.”
Speaker Salaam also urged the electorate to be magnanimous to the
legislators by re-electing them back for a long time, for the sake of
cutting the cost.
Salaam said, “if we have our lawmakers reelected time and time over again,
the cost of training new lawmakers would be saved, and the system would be
better for it, because of the experience that would have been acquired
along the line, but if we keep on changing the lawmakers, then we have to
keep on training at expensive rate