The Speaker Niger state House of Assembly, Rt. Hon. Abdulmalik Sarkindaji, has lamented that the country is going through the worst economic crisis in history at the moment, saying Nigerians are suffering under real hard times.
Rt. Hon. Abdulmalik Sarkindaji stated this while addressing members of the state’s 10th Assembly at the legislative chamber in Minna on Tuesday after its eight-week recess.
He said as representatives of the people, they must be close to their constituency and get the feelings of the people, adding that, “This is the only way we can address their challenges in other to improve their standard of living.”
He reminded the lawmakers that the eight weeks of recess was a traditional legislative practice borne out of the necessity to create an opportunity for them to take time out of their busy legislative business to interact with their constituents.
The speaker said the recess afforded the lawmakers that opportunity to update themselves on happenings and development in government, adding that “we have taken the oath to serve the people. It will be a political suicide if we deliberately stay away from our responsibility to serve the people.”
He pointed out that the current economic hardship in the country is not peculiar to Niger State alone explaining that every part of the country is going through similar economic hardship.
According to him, “with all the resources God has blessed us with in Niger state, we should not in any way be so poor and dependent almost totally on Federation Allocation and international donor agencies to survive.”
He commended the executive arm of government for the unprecedented synergy with the state assembly in the struggle to engineer and overhaul the entire governmental process and architecture to usher in the new Niger, stressing: “I am optimistic that the present administration will bring about radical transition in the state from economic dependency to economic self-sufficiency.”
