Sir: It is difficult to understand where Nigeria copied its own brand of democracy. There are just too many awkward practices that have now been ingrained permanently into the state’s affairs and quite surprisingly all citizens have accepted them as normal.

Of all these absurd practices, the most annoying and disturbing is what the assemblies call Constituency Project for which reason billions of naira are said to be spent to provide amenities needed in their communities. This is erroneously termed and justified as oversight functions.

With this practice, massive funds which ought to go into education, health, agriculture, and housing for the masses are allegedly given to members of the assembly who most times simply pocket the funds and present fake pictures of accomplishments in their constituencies to the assembly. Even where a few projects are executed, it often definitely falls short of expectation in view of the large funds received.

All over the world, the main duty of the legislature is to make laws for good governance and monitor the executive for implementation and compliance while also acting as a check on both the executive and the judiciary to guard against abuse of power.

The oversight function carried out by the legislature is to supervise and monitor projects carried out by the various ministries to ensure quality and accountability. It is never within the schedule of national or state assemblies to carry out projects by themselves.

Sadly, with this strange practice which has become the norm in Nigeria, the Federal Ministry of Works which is officially saddled with the responsibility of carrying out the activities but now taken over by members of the national and state assemblies has been rendered completely irrelevant and useless. Since its function is being usurped by the assembly members, it means all the workers in that ministry would be redundant or the assembly members may only involve them on a contract basis. Whichever is the case, Nigeria remains the loser as large sums of money continues to go down the drain.

It is, therefore, high time for all well -meaning Nigerians to kick against members of the assemblies executing constituency projects. Every building and construction project must revert to the Federal Ministry of Works and its states counterparts while members of the assembly can monitor and supervise them.

Jide Oyewusi is the coordinator of Ethics Watch International Nigeria.