President Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday, February 19, said public perception about members of the National Assembly is negative.
President Buhari explained that Nigerians see the lawmakers as people who get too much money for doing little work.
The president who was represented by the spokesman of the federal government and minister of information and culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, made the statement at the launch of a magazine by the leadership of the House of Representatives.
According to him, “Hitherto, the public perception of the National Assembly is that of a bicameral legislature where overly comfortable and highly over-paid members merely stuff wads of currency notes into their pockets for little work done.
“This wrong perception has resulted partly from the lack of understanding of the enormous work of lawmakers, especially outside the glare of television cameras.”
Today, we unveiled ‘The Green Chamber’ magazine, a platform to intimate Nigerians and the international community about the activities of Nigeria’s House of Representatives @HouseNGR pic.twitter.com/rE92haPURs
— Femi Gbajabiamila (@femigbaja) February 19, 2020
Earlier, The Herald reported that Femi Gbajabiamila, the speaker of House of Representatives, and the chairman committee on defence, Babajimi Benson, alleged that foreign governments fuel the insurgency in the country.
Benson said: “Yes, as I said, that is part of the things we discussed. There could be some truth in that. “Military issues are not things we should discuss in public but they raised a lot of issues that we must all sit down as Nigerians and discuss.
“One of them is that there is probably an international dimension to what we see. There is ISIS, there is ISWAP. These are things that we need to discuss in a very classified manner.
“But what we want Nigerians to know is that we are committed to them 100 per cent, to see that we assist the military and the Armed Forces and ensuring that this matter is put to an end within the shortest possible time.”
“We were to a large extent satisfied with what they said. As I said, we are also going to table what they said before parliament. We are going to discuss; we are going to have a very robust discussion on how to assist, to end this war. It is Nigeria that is at war…how to end this at the shortest possible time”