Cost of governance: merge Senate with House Reps- APC chieftain advocates

By Jude Opara

A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, (APC), Abiodun Salami, has called for the adoption of the unicameral legislative system in Nigeria to reduce the cost of governance.
Salami, a former Assistant Publicity Secretary of the APC in Lagos, made the call in an interview with NAN yesterday.
He was reacting to calls in some quarters that the country jettison its current two-chamber National Assembly and adopt a unicameral legislature to reduce cost of governance.
NAN reports that a unicameral legislature is a system with one chamber or house, unlike a bicameral legislature which has two chambers, the Senate and House of Representatives.
Some countries with unicameral legislatures include China, with the National People’s Congress, Norway’s Storting, Sweden with the Riksdag, Denmark’s Folketing and Portugal’s Assembly of the Republic.
Salami said the Senate and House of Representatives should be merged and the number of legislators pruned, to have a single-chamber legislature.
He said operating the House of Representatives and the Senate together is a burden on the country’s resources.
“Bi-cameral legislature is wasteful. We can merge the Senate and the House of Representatives to have a single house to ease the business of lawmaking and reduce the huge funds spent to maintain the two chambers that we have now.
“We can merge the two chambers and then reduce the number of lawmakers. The country spends a lot maintaining the 109 Senators and 360 members of the House of Representatives
“We are having challenges with the economy right now. We should be ready to make sacrifices and take bold steps. The bicameral legislature we are having,t o me, is frivolity”, he said.