LET’S OUTSOURCE THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY

Outsourcing is a business practice that has earned mixed reactions.
Principally it is a tool used by companies in order to cut costs and remain competitive. The practice emanated from highly industrialized countries when they transferred some part or all manufacturing processes of certain products overseas, to countries such as China, India, and Taiwan; but not to Nigeria, Niger, or Chad.
The recipient countries boast of excellent infrastructure and highly educated workforce but at lower wage costs than citizens of the outsourcing countries.
The cost of governance in Nigeria has skyrocketed since the return to democracy in Nigeria in 1999.
No one single institution in this dispensation has gobbled up resources more than the National Assembly.
So colossal is the amount paid to the members, and so unjustifiable, that the paying authorities hide behind national security to deny Nigerians the knowledge of how much each Senator or Member costs the citizen taxpayer!
In Nigeria governance has taken a life of its own. The reason for representation has been entirely forgotten.
We may have a democracy but we don’t have representative government. Those who came to us cap in hand begging for votes are now our ‘ Lords of Manor’: so rich, so powerful, so protected, and so inaccessible.
Since the Americans do not trust us to govern ourselves well, finding it necessary to send a pliable person to us to recruit as our finance minister, they might as well instruct her to outsource the functions of Nigeria’s National Assembly to US Congress.
If the objective of the engagement of Dr Okonjo-Iweala from her post at World Bank is to ensure the outflow of Nigeria’s petro-dollars, it is in their interest to corner this lucrative market called National Assembly.
In the event we have some vestiges of false national pride remaining, that we cannot outsource National Assembly, then let us be honest to re-name it as billionaires-creating institute.
Of course this will require constitutional amendments, to specify who is eligible for membership.
Since it is to be a centre for creation of billionaires, the likes of Dangote would be Senate President by selection. He will teach Senators how to use their loot, (sorry, salaries) to establish profitable businesses that will employ us, the masses.
In the same vein, the Speaker of the House should be a subsidy-scammer, who would teach members how to engage in permissible criminal behaviour.
The television showed the Senators in session one day. A sweep of the camera showed some swollen-necked, swollen-cheeked, Nigerian-like creatures,  discussing ‘national’ affairs, which at that particular moment was that one worker of a federal institution had complained to his Senator of his delayed promotion.
That Senate environment rudely reminds me that George Orwell’s Animal Farm was not a work of fiction; but a ‘revealed’ book worthy of devotional study.


daily trust