A discussant’s perspective on Speakers of the House proposal – By Prof Awa Uma
Possible Merits & Pitfalls of the Hon Ugochukwu Nwaokoro’s Unicameral House of Speakers Proposal
This Proposal is an interesting theory from former Deputy Mayor on to the need to scrap Nigeria’s National Assembly – (https://we4wereports.com/nigeria-does-not-need-a-national-assembly-as-presently-constituted-ugochukwu-nwaokoro/). I love the creative ideas presented in the write up but would like to play devil’s advocate by questioning the real gains to the country as it has some advantages and disadvantages. Since this is an excerpt from a book, I recognize that the details in the book may have addressed some or all of the questions I would like to ask. Apart from purging the country of dubious and corrupt legislators and saving maximum amount of money when compared to reducing the number of legislators, how would the country fare in terms of quality, productivity, effectiveness, and efficiency of legislative doings? And what would happen to partisanship at the state level knowing that the speaker to be sent to Abuja is the partisan representative of the majority party? I looked at the theory from many perspectives but only chose to highlight the two that relates to power and efficiency.
In the first instance, the theory is talking about reinventing the wheel on existing unicameral and bicameral assemblies and disabling a strong bicameral power structure familiar to Nigerians. It is obvious that resistance will be too great and would result in Newton’s third law of motion converted to human reaction. Newton’s third law of motion simply states that “action and reaction are equal and opposite”. We know that there are many unicameral (one-chambered) legislative bodies but non has ever existed in form of the proposed “Speakers of the House” national assembly. We also know that the two advantages always associated with unicameral National Assembly as opposed to bicameral are legislative effectiveness and cost reduction. On the other hand, the two advantages associated with bicameral as opposed to unicameral national assembly are effective diverse groups representation and taming partisan power when the speaker and the president belong to the same party.
In the second instance, the theory is talking about giving dual roles (National and State) and more responsibilities to state speakers and deputy governors. This duality in effect will change their duties and tasks in a way that will reduce the effectiveness and efficiency embedded as important parts of existing or conventional unicameral assemblies. Hence, “Technology Management” would frown at the potential conflicts and divided attention in the duties of the speakers and deputy governors. I consider such conflicts to include not just conflict of interest between national and state policies but also conflict in ability to schedule and attend both state and national legislative meetings. For example, my permutation from engineering perspective is yielding more than 1000 cumulative state speaker absences at legislative sessions (national and State) in a year due to potential scheduling conflicts. This is in realization of the fact that the duties of a state speaker include presiding over daily meetings as well as performing administrative and procedural tasks. It would be impractical for them to be in two places at the same time. Another impracticality is full rotation of speakers within four years.
My general comment is that this type of proposal is required of us whether or not it is accepted by Nigeria. In 2016, I wrote an article in the Nigeria World Newspaper titled “Important democratic lessons are lost in the current political debates”. In this article, written during Obasanjo’s third term saga, I proposed a one term 5-year presidential rule. After about 14 years, a legislation on one term 5-year presidential rule was tabled and debated at the national assembly. Even though it failed, I am happy that we have some legislators who are thinking outside the box. Who knows, this proposal on Speakers of the House may one day find its way to the Nigerian national assembly.
Prof. Awa Uma
Prof. Awa Uma is a technocrat who studied Technology education as well as Industrial technology, engineering, and management. He has taught at 3 universities and worked at 3 fortune 500 manufacturing industries. In the late 1980s, he was one of four doctoral students recruited nationwide by the U. S. Dept. of Labor, Washington D. C. and the only one contracted to develop Competency Based Education (CBE) for Job Corps programs. Back then, he advised visiting African Ministers and together with Hon. Emma Okocha (Journalist and author of Blood on the Niger), led a trade mission comprising of 12 American investors to Nigeria. He regularly writes professional and newspaper articles. He has made many presentations at the national conference of the Association of Technology, Management, and Applied Engineering (ATMAE) and is presently working on a project to establish Industrial Technology in African Universities based on one of his presentations titled: Achieving International Technology Transfer to Africa with Modified Industrial Technology Programs.