Tinubu’s Presidency And The Impact Of Legislative Experience Of Key Functionaries 

By Chief Peter Ameh

THE impact of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, his vice, Kazeem Shettima, and several other cabinet members with legislative backgrounds on the governance of the country, and on the other hand, the relationship between the Executive and Legislative arms of government has erased the practice of separation of powers and driven legislative oversight into a non-existent state.

The one year of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s government is close to an unmitigated disaster, just like Muhammadu Buhari’s. This disaster is a result of the twin evil of “subsidy is gone and naira floatation.”

How do we measure the impact of a government on the citizenry? We have always believed that it is by the quality and quantity of life of the majority of the people, and in the case of President Tinubu, are Nigerians better off than they were a year ago. The answer is in the negative. 

The lives of Nigerian citizens have become something close to the biblical passage of passing through the valley of the shadow of death. Businesses are going belly up. Those who have not gone under are retrenching workers at an alarming rate. Others have taken the option of going abroad

(Ghana) to continue their businesses.

We now sleep with our two eyes wide open because of insecurity. Interstate movements have become an agonising proposition because of the probability of not getting to our destination in one piece.

Nigerians now walk on the streets with hunger written all over their faces, sometimes soliloquizing. One square meal has become a luxury and an abstract concept. Our markets are now saturated with unsold goods because the little funds in their pockets can no longer purchase anything of significance to feed a single mouth. 

Farmers no longer go to farms because those that went before now have either been killed or in the custody of their abductors. Out-of-school students are on the rise as a result of the inability of their parents to pay the increased school fees.

Please, remember that in the presidential system of government, the buck stops at the table of the president, and all the other cabinet members serve at the pleasure of the president.  

The government of President Tinubu is populated by people who have performed below average in their various ministries except the FCT and Minister of  Aviation who are putting local airlines in charge of our air transport services, who have been up and running in their assignments. 

As for the Vice President, he has offered and shown himself to be a loyal vice considering the circumstances he has found himself. The president should rejig his cabinet, and drop those who do not know why they were appointed ministers in the first place. 

The relationship between the Executive and the Legislature in this government is not only cordial but that of master-servant relationship. It is as if it is still a continuation of President Buhari’s presidency when every bill, proposal, and request was passed without scrutiny and input from the legislators. The concept of separation of powers demands that the Legislature acts as a check on the Executive to prevent tyranny which we are beginning to see in this government. A typical example is the ongoing Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway where no appropriation was made for it in the 2024 Appropriation Act.

For our democracy to inch forward, our Legislature or National Assembly must fight for its independence and free itself from the apron strings of the Executive.

• Chief Peter Ameh is the National Secretary of the Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP). He writes from Lagos.

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