A ranking member of the Senate and chairman, Senate Public Accounts Committee (SPAC), Senator Mathew Urhoghide, on Monday, said the 10th National Assembly will suffer what he described as “institutional memory loss” as many members of the current National Assembly with wealth of experience and knowledge in lawmaking will not return to the next Assembly, having lost their reelection bids in the just-concluded 2023 elections in their various States.
Urhoghide also knocked the 36 State governors in the country, blaming them for some of the woes bedevilling the nation.
He specifically said the governors’ desire to control the President, the National Assembly, State Assemblies and Local Governments, was part of the problem facing Nigeria.
The federal lawmaker, who spoke to journalists in Benin City, Edo State capital, also responded to pressure being mounted on him to join the 2024 governorship race in the State, saying that his political future was in the hand of God.
Senator Urhoghide added that there was nothing that can stop him if he wanted to become Edo State governor in 2024.
“Let me say this, parliament all over the world is driven by knowledge, it is a repository of knowledge and you get better in the business of lawmaking and other legislative activities, the more you stay there. Whether in the parliamentary or presidential system, it is driven by experience.
“That is why the number of times you come in there ranks you. Whatever laws made for good governance in the land is from the parliament, they are not cooked overnight. If you keep taking people out of the National Assembly and keep feeding in new people, what happens to institutional memory?
“Since I got to the Senate about eight years ago, put it conservatively, I have been trained up to 20 times outside the shores of this country. What happens to the experience? Because the training I have received is not transferable. Today, as we speak, less than 20 per cent of Senators will come back to the (10th) Senate. It is a huge loss to this country,” he stated.
On the State governors’ desire to always control the system from the top to the bottom level of government, Urhoghide said: “The state governors are a major problem as they want to control the President, the National Assembly, the State Houses of Assembly, and the Local Government Councils.
“I believe they don’t understand their roles in democracy. If there are any parameter to judge what they have done in the states, very few governors will pass. The development of a state is multi-faceted.
“It is not just the number of roads you tar that determine whether you have done well or not. What about human capital development? What about the different sectors of our economic life and the lives of our people? The man that you are building roads or bridges for, how have you developed him, so that he can fend for himself and his family? You must develop the man in totality.”
The Edo South Senator, therefore, advised the President-elect, Bola Tinubu, to do everything possible to bring Nigerians together, as Nigerians have never been so divided as they are currently.
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