As
more Nigerians continue calls for membership of the National
Assembly-the Senate and House of Representative- to be made part-time
due to the huge cost of running the two chambers, the Vice President,
Professor Yemi Osinbajo has said such move would require a
constitutional amendment.
The Vice President, who was responding
to comments from members during the 90th Anniversary of the Yoruba
Tennis Club in Lagos yesterday, stressed that such change would “go
through the National Assembly”, thereby making it the prerogative of the
lawmakers to either adopt it or not.
On the call for the autonomy of Federal
Universities, Osinbajo said that would only be feasible if the
institutions could finance themselves in all aspects.“ But as long as
the government continues doing that, attainment of complete autonomy
would be difficult,” he said.
Earlier, the Vice President, who was the
guest speaker at the event, delivered a lecture titled: Revitalizing
the Nigerian Economy: The Challenges and the Opportunities, in which he
stated: “We have been talking about diversification for about 40 years,
but we have not been able to achieve this due to lack of discipline,”
stressing that the call only intensifies whenever there is crises in the
oil sector.
Osinbajo who said that Nigeria is facing
the “most challenging period” economically, which has plunged the
country into a recession, said the government was doing its best to
revive the economy with one of the ways being “Social Housing
Initiative” which would be launched by the end of the year.
He stressed that the idea was not just for job creation, but to also create an avenue where young Nigerians could own houses.
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