Orji Kalu advocates for part-time legislature to ‘cut cost of governance’

Orji Kalu, the senator representing Abia North, has proposed implementing a part-time legislative system at both national and sub-national levels to reduce the cost of governance.

In a video posted on his Facebook page on Sunday, Kalu suggested that legislative bodies across the country should convene three or four times annually, with additional emergency sessions as needed.

“I think it will be a very good idea if my colleagues and other members of the houses of assembly will agree that we can sit for three months and do constitutional amendment first.

“So we can sit four times a year and if there’s any emergency, there will be emergency sitting,” he said.

He elaborated that such a system would apply not only to the Senate and the House of Representatives but also to all legislative houses in Nigeria.

“If we are going for a regional government, it also means that the ministers, the legislators will be the same. I have been tinkering with the idea of how we can save money to run Nigeria because the country needs money,” the senator said.

Kalu urged the president and the national assembly to consider enacting laws to establish a part-time legislative system. “I will encourage the president, the national assembly to make these kinds of laws.

“This will help him, and this will help the system, and this will help everybody,” he added. The former governor noted that while senators are not highly paid, a part-time legislative system would “build trust and provide relief to the Nigerian people.”