Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal, has said that the votes of the people in the 2015 general elections must count and be respected.
He said this in Abuja on Thursday at the special plenary session to mark the second anniversary of the 7th House of Representatives.
According to him, “We must place national interest above selfish interest; we must place objective principles above parochialism and whims. We must deliberately promote a viable and transparent electoral process. The right to opinion and dissent must be given space in our political discuss.
He declared that “Internal party democracy is a sine qua non to the genuine development of democratic culture, therefore, as we work and walk towards 2015, we ought to take the vow that all votes must count whether in intra party democratic processes or at the level of inter party contests.
“True democracy does not happen by accident, it is therefore our duty as intimate practitioners and beneficiaries of political patronage to be in the vanguard of the deepening of democracy. The people of Nigeria desire and deserve this, it is right and honourable we have a duty to deliver these noble expectations.
Noting that the role of the legislature in the sustenance of true democracy is critical and imperative, Tambuwal said that, “If the legislature loses credibility and the moral standing to efficiently perform its constitutional duties of checks and balances, then democracy is threatened a bigotry, authoritarianism, despotism and all the negative isms will mount the saddle and absolute corruption will run the nation aground. Certainly we have no mandate to oversight the failing of the State.”
He described as unacceptable, a situation in which the nation still suffers acute poverty of democratic culture and practices, 14 years of uninterrupted democracy.
The Speaker was also of the view that government measures against insecurity and insurgency are cosmetic, saying that the vicious circle of unemployment, poverty and insecurity constitute a grave social malady in the nation’s body polity and which has forced Nigeria to declare war on consequences rather than causes.
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