Speaker of the Kwara state House of Assembly, Yakubu Salihu Danladi, has said contrary to the belief by some Nigerians, “legislators are not elected to fight or oppose the executive arm of the government.”
The speaker stated this while delivering a keynote address at the 2023 press week of the Kwara state Council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) in Ilorin Thursday.
According to the speaker, the legislature is an extension of the executive and the two must always work in harmony for the citizens to reap the dividends of democracy.
“We are not voted to have conflict with the executives, we are not voted to cause chaos in the state; we are voted for good governance. If there is a conflict between us, there won’t be peace and development,” he said.
He urged the media and practitioners to disabuse the minds of those who tagged Kwara legislators in particular as “rubber stamps.”
Citing the crisis between the executive and legislators in Edo and Rivers states, he said the lingering crisis in the two states had “deprived indigenes of the dividends of democracy.”
He said harmony “prevails in Kwara state because the governor, Malam AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, never dabbles into the affairs of the legislature.”
“We have a governor that does not dabble into legislative affairs; the moment he submits the budget, we scrutinise it thoroughly.”
