Editorial: Quality Representation In The Midst Of Low Representation

Legislative representation at the national and state level has seen a lot of progress, backwardness, docility, embezzlement, and lackluster from different lawmakers. At the state level especially, many lawmakers or House of Assembly members have positioned themselves as an integral part of the mindless executive recklessness.

According to Warren G. Harding, “there is something inherently wrong, something out of accord with the ideals of representative democracy, when one portion of our citizenship turns its activities to private gain”. These lawmakers live and dine by the whims and caprices of their executive governors.

Any lawmaker that dares to challenge the executive heists will pay the iron price for challenging constituted authorities. In the end, the representation of people which is the real stamp of representative democracy will be jettisoned, executive oversights become impossible on the altar of political expediency.

Amid the current hopelessness, hope is arising among the present House of Assembly members in Anambra State led by Hon. Uche Okafor. The rising star among them is the member representing Nnewi North Constituency, Hon. Nonso Smart Okafor. The Mandela Washington Fellow raised a new bar in legislative representation recently by reconstructing a dilapidated mud house into a three-bedroom bungalow. The occupants were three widows that were married to the same late husband in his constituency.

The building of this bungalow has been receiving commendation from keen observers nationally and internationally because the welfare of the vulnerable member of the society is the least of the worries of many lawmakers. The compassion, care, thoughtfulness towards these widows that lived in a thatched house that leaked whenever it rained.

“Disturbed by their plight, I visited these women, I was moved to pity when I noticed that the oldest who was in her seventies or eighties was blind and sick. Their dilapidated mud house is not so different from living outside as it was riddled with gaping holes which cannot prevent cold, mosquitoes, or worst-case scenario snake attacks. It was heartbreaking that these women in their age who deserve to be tended like babies live in penury in a house that cannot guarantee good sleep”, said Hon Nonso Smart Okafor.

The New Building Built by Hon. Nonso Smart Okafar

He said further, “It has a sitting room with a set cushion chairs, side stools, and centre table. It also has a flat-screen LED TV and Cable TV with one-year full subscription and also a well-decorated curtain. Each of the three rooms is furnished with a wardrobe, bed, mattress, beddings and curtains. Both the kitchen, which is also furnished, the toilet and bath are all in line with every sense of modernity. This is to ensure that these women have the needed relaxation they require.”

Hon. Smart has done well, he has earned our applause and commendation, however the electorates and the society at large has many unmet expectations, there are other salient areas where the government needs to do more, for example, his bill for an Act to establish Anambra State Youth Development and Empowerment Commission should be followed through to its realization.