By Primus Igboaka – Cleveland, Ohio. U.S.A.
Nigerians, holding our elected Congress men and women accountable is our responsibility as citizens.
Calls to elected members of the Congress, Local Government officials and Ministers is a right that all Nigerians must learn to exercise. Just as it is also the right of constituents to demand quarterly Town Hall meetings where the elected officials brief their people or render account for the office they hold.
Constituents must find out what programs and development projects the elected representatives are supporting, the bills for approval in the Senate or House of Representatives.
Citizens could propose bills to their representatives in the Congress for development of their communities, states and the country. It is the rights of citizens to follow these bills up till they are approved. Even when rejected, the bills could be reinvented or reformed and brought up again they go through.
I was surprised that in Nigeria, elected representatives never found time to meet with their constituents…people they were supposed to serve. They never held Town Hall meetings to brief the people they serve or account for their office. It is very unfortunate and that explains why you place a call to your senator or representative, he or she never calls back. This is assuming his or her phone is not switched off.
In the United States, I taught a summer semester in an off campus of my College at Downtown Lorain, Ohio. My classroom was located three rooms after Senator Brown’s (Democrat from Ohio) office. I could tell that his office was busy with his constituents coming for one thing or the other. Guess what?…He attended to them on daily basis during his summer break, and some, he walked with them to the packing lot to bid them farewell.
For the 8 weeks I was at the off campus that summer, I witnessed him received members of his constituency on a daily basis. Whenever he was in Washington, he personally picked up calls himself.
While he is a humble man, and still the senator (serving a second term), he knows too well that if he refuses to listen to his people or stop his quarterly town hall meetings..he will lose the voters’ support ….meaning, that he will lose re-election bid (some senators have served 20-30 years….but you have to show and prove that you are a leader to earn this)
In fact, the sooner we Nigerians hold our elected leaders accountable the more we realise that it is our fault to be wailers when we (ourselves) do not exercise the responsibility of holding our leaders accountable for the office we elected them to serve the people. After all, they are so-called representative because of you and I as power belongs to the people. It is not about them, their pockets for themselves and their godfathers and their cronies. It is not about them; it is about you, us and our people that they are in office.
