National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, has said ordinary Nigerians crave constituency projects rather than the business of lawmaking which is the primary responsibility of the lawmakers.
The former Kano state governor made the declaration on Thursday when he met with a forum of Former National Assembly Members who paid him a courtesy visit.
The APC national chairman who admitted that controversy has always trailed execution of such projects however noted that constituents of the lawmakers are often excited with the physical infrastructures than the business of lawmaking and oversight functions of the parliamentarians.
He said:”You can see how important you are in fact, National Assembly is only the first casualty to military rule, therefore, since we are lucky for many decades now, we are experiencing democracy.
“It is your responsibility to consolidate National Assembly, whether you are inside or outside, the psychological thing that binds you together should continue, that is why we are so happy with the legislative project in their constituency projects.
“Even though some are saying why constituency projects, but an ordinary voter even though your main function is to make laws and oversight functions, an ordinary voter would like to see something on the ground.
“He doesn’t think how legislation is affecting his life, he doesn’t see how oversight function is affecting his life, but he can easily see a constituency project whether it is a borehole, whether the building of a school building or clinic and so many other things.
“So we think it is very important,whether you’re from third, fourth and fifth legislation, when you see your constituency project that you are elected, you feel very happy and satisfied.”
Leader of the team, Honourable Ibrahim Zailani pleaded that the Forum be accorded party patronage having contributed in no small measure to the victory of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
“As you can see, we are representing the country because all the Six geopolitical zones are adequately represented here.
“We may not be in the House of Representatives now, but we want to tell you that all of us have the energy, the vision and the interest of the party at heart, so we are offering ourselves for any party assignments.
“With this, we know from one of us, you may have a special place for either the legislators or former members of our forum, because we saw what you have done with one of our members who was your immediate past commissioner for finance.
“We want you to do more, possibly pick one of our ladies and work within the APC.
“On behalf of all of us, we thank you, we’ll continue to pray for you, to show our solidarity, to show our support because any support given to you, we are giving to ourselves because we belong to APC.”
Responding to their demand for relevance in party matters and the federal government appointments, the APC national chairman assured that his leadership would look into their request.
“We thank you for coming, like you requested Inshallah, (God willing) we should be able to and will be involving you in one activity or another, because you have the institutional memory when talking of anything dealing with political parties, dealing with conflict resolution, partying registration, dealing with election campaign, you have institutional memory about it and so you are more qualified than any other person.
‘So we hope we have the list of members, telephone numbers, states of origin, because we must use you from time to time because you are important partners of progress.
“I assure you, we view you as a very, important institution of our national diversity and how to manage our national diversity is one of the cardinal principles of this administration.
“You saw how our President Bola Ahmed Tinubu when he was governor of Lagos State, he use national diversity to move Lagos forward and he is translating that to Nigeria at the moment.”
The former Kano state governor also received the leadership of South West Agenda for Asiwaju ( SWAGA) . Senator Dayo Adeyeye who led the team assured Ganduje of the cooperation of members of the Forum.
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