Less financial pressure from constituents will make us focus on our core mandate – Hon. Akiba

Chairman House Committee on Healthcare Services Rt Hon Bassey Ekpeyong Akiba Deputy has posited that federal legislators can do their job better if there is less financial demands from their people which is capable of distracting them from their core lawmaking, representation and oversight functions.

Hon Bassey Akiba, who also represents Calabar Municipal Constituency in the House of Representatives made this revelation in an exclusive media chat with newsmen in Abuja asserting thus: ‘l want to believe that the people that sent me to the National Assembly know exactly why they sent me here. The business ofe parliament is anchored on three planks; firstly, representation which means that we should convey the message of our people to the government and its functionaries.

We should also bring feedback on government policies back to the people because the constitution envisages that everybody cannot come to the National Assembly at the same time so one person out of the many will represent their constituency at a given time.

So representation essentially means taking the message of the people to the people and taking what government says about the people back to them.

The second function is lawmaking which is all about making laws for good governance which also needs to involve the people. The third function of the legislator is to oversight the laws they have made to ensure that the various agencies of government complies with them. So my legislative agenda for the 10th National Assembly revolves around these three areas and this explains my regular engagement with my constituents, to hear from them so that l can convey their concerns to the government and relay the feedback from government tod them.

However because of the level of poverty in the nation, a lot of people prefer us to focus on the monetary angle rather than on our core mandate and that’s why during a stakeholders meeting l told my people that l can only focus on my legislative agenda if there is lesser demand for money coming from numerous quarters.

Our core mandate is to make laws to better our people’s lot but the constant demand for money will pressure us to deviate from our primary agenda. But if we are able to focus on our core mandate without distraction, our constituents will be better off.’ Hon Bassey further revealed that he has sponsored several motions and bills on the floor of the Green Chamber in order to advance his beloved people’s interests in the crucial scheme of things: “Our representative functions also involves the introduction and passage of motions which is a way of conveying the feelings of the people to the government and l have moved a number of motions like the one calling on the federal government to complete section 5 of the East-West Road as other sections, 1,2,3 and 4 have been completed remaining section 5 and that is why l moved a motion urging the government to start and complete section 5 which is pivotal to the socio-economic development of our zone.

I have also moved another motion on the devastation caused by gully erosion in some communities in my constituency urging the federal government to come to the aid of the affected communities whom are calling for urgent succour and assistance. We have also sponsored a number of bills that have passed first reading in the House and we hope to scale the second and third reading stages. And as l keep saying our people should allow us to focus on our mandate because if we are able to do that successfully, the poverty level will fall and there will be no need for our people to be demanding money from us. We the legislators are the watchdog of the people, if the governmexnt does not do what they are supposed to do, we will agitate and the government will do it for them. And if the government takes care of them, they will be self-sufficient and so will not have any need coming to us for anything.”

ln the area of constituency project execution, Hon Bassey Akiba emphatically stated that it is not within the ambit of his legislative mandate to execute projects while calling on his people to be patient and more involved in governance in order to move the legislative process forward: “As federal legislators we don’t have a mandate to execute projects, our duty is to propose projects for execution based on our interaction with our people on their specific needs be it roads, power, pipeborne water, schools, hospitals etc.Our job is to identify their needs and relay them to government and also follow up to ensure that those projects are included in the Appropriation Act, the budget and duly executed. It is the duty of the government to execute the projects though we gmonitor and oversight their execution to conclusion.

“My overall message to my constituents is that they should exercise patience as we are in a transition stage trying to put things on track and in order. Also they should be more involved in the governance structure and be more abreast of issues concerning them and by articulating their needs and desires, l will be in a better position to relay their concerns to the federal government. That’s the way the legislative process works.” (Blueprint)