Agitation or call for a reduction in the cost of governance has
been rather perennial. I wrote on this very topic sometime in the 1980s for the
London-based West Africa magazine. I had then called for a reduction in the
number of senatorial seats per state, which then was five. I had also called
for a reduction in the number of ministers and advisers-all these in the
Nigerian Second Republic.
*President Buhari and Senate President Lawan |
I would later follow up this discussion with a
memorandum to the Ibrahim Babangida-led Armed Forces Ruling Council
(AFRC), sometime in 1986, in which I suggested that senatorial constituencies
could be limited to what is now 3 Senators per state.